Lawmakers seized the opportunity presented by a congressional committee hearing on the troubled bailout program to grill eight bank CEOs and vent rising public anger over the economic crisis.

Questions abound about what the banks have done with the money, given an ongoing credit crisis that has added to the country's deteriorating economy. The hearing came a day after Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner failed to inspire market confidence over the government's financial bailout plans and sent stock markets plunging.

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"We have a hard-earned reputation for frugality, not extravagance," said Ken Lewis, CEO of Bank of America. "Taxpayers have invested in our company, and they deserve to know what return they are making on their investment and when it will be paid back."

Toward that end, Lewis said, he and other top bank managers went without bonuses for 2008, while less-senior executives had their 2008 incentive payments cut by an average of 80 percent.

The chief executives each read a prepared statement arguing that their institutions used taxpayer funds responsibly.

thurs 12 feb

WASHINGTON (AFP) - - Merrill Lynch quietly paid out at least one million dollars bonus each to about 700 top executive even when the investment house was bleeding with losses last year, a probe has revealed.

They were part of 3.6 billion dollars in the firm's bonus payments in December before the announcement of its fourth quarterly losses and takeover by Bank of America, the investigation by the New York state Attorney General's office showed.

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"Merrill Lynch's decision to secretly and prematurely award approximately 3.6 billion dollars in bonuses, and Bank of America's apparent complicity in it, raise serious and disturbing questions," he said.

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Former Merrill Lynch chief executive John Thain, Bank of America chief administrative officer J. Steele Alphin and other top executives have been summoned to provide testimony in the probe.

"One disturbing question that must be answered is whether Merrill Lynch and Bank of America timed the bonuses in such a way as to force taxpayers to pay for them through the deal funding," Cuomo said.

UN-FREAKING-BELIEVABLE.

craig ferguson (on obama's cap of wall street CEOs' salaries at 500k a year): "for most of these wall street clowns, 500k is a huge paycut. some of these people were making hundreds of millions every year. they say that these huge salaries were justified because it took alot of hard work to drive these magnificent companies into the ground. but, these aren't just run of the mill executives we're talking about, these guys are the creme of the crap, and they may have a point! because aaaaaaaaaaaaaanybody can make stupid decisions and reduce a bank's capital to zero, but it takes a real genius to go past zero and end up billions of dollars in debt!"

jon stewart (on wall street's negative response towards the 1trillion dollar bailout): "let me get this straight. wall street doesn't like the particulars of the bailout, of wall street. oh you don't like the particulars of how the trillion dollars would be distributed to YOU. the trillion dollars we're giving you to replace the, oh, i don't know, the trillion or so dollars you lost. let me briefly explain to you the rescuer-rescuee relationship. YOU, my friends, are in the drowning position, so i would suggest, you don't complain about whether or not you get a window seat on the rescue boat. 'cos by the way, what the f*** are you doing in the water anyway?! you know, you are not innocent victims of a geese driveby, you're the dick that thinks it's funny to go parasailing during a hurricane, and the thing about guys like these? they never have insurance."