Execs should forego bonuses: Obama

Barack Obama said US corporate executives should forgo big bonuses since the economy is faltering.

US corporate executives should forgo big bonuses since the economy is faltering and hundreds of thousand of workers face job cuts, President-elect Barack Obama said in an ‘ABC News’ interview airing on Wednesday.

“I think that if you are already worth tens of millions of dollars, and you are having to lay off workers, the least you can do is say, I’m willing to make some sacrifice as well,” Obama said.

Executive bonuses have been strongly criticized as US taxpayers, suffering the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, question the US Treasury Department’s $700 billion bailout of the financial industry, which played a large role in creating the crisis.

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In the wide-ranging interview, Obama was asked what he thought about the heads of the Big Three US automakers taking private planes to Washington last week to ask Congress for a bailout.

Their actions show that the CEOs were “a little tone deaf” to what is happening in America, Obama said, adding that it was a chronic problem, and not just for the auto industry.

“I think it’s been a problem for the captains of industry generally,” Obama said.

“When people are pulling down hundred-million-dollar bonuses on Wall Street, and taking enormous risks with other people’s money, that indicates a sense that you don’t have any perspective on what’s happening to ordinary Americans.”

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