My Business & Mortgage Blog

Nothing trickled down

You'll remember that the bailouts were supposed to save not just banks but the economy -- and be accompanied by reform to prevent future meltdowns.

"There was a theory that if you bailed out the banks, they would lend money to small businesses, and they are not," says Stephen Lerner of the Service Employees International Union. "Banks have unlimited money to reward themselves, but they have no interest in lifting up the country that helped them."

It's those rewards that have spurred a second round of outrage. The top six banks -- Bank of America , Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase (JPM, news, msgs), Wells Fargo (WFC, news, msgs), Citigroup (C, news, msgs) and Morgan Stanley (MS, news, msgs) -- are on track to pay out $140.5 billion in bonuses for 2009, the SEIU calculates.