Our friends at Goldman Sachs seem to have hit the jackpot with taxpayers money as they have set aside a massive $4.7 billion for bonuses in the past quarter. Let us see if they receive the same media ride as did AIG when their taxpayers paid bonuses were revealed?

The looting intensifies - VHF

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Goldman Bonuses Are Way Up Too!

Business Insider

John Carney

April 13, 2009

Goldman Sachs set aside $4.7 billion for salaries and bonuses last quarter, after taking in a profit of $1.7 billion. That means Goldman’s employees stand to profit far more than its shareholders from this quarter’s outperformance.

The $4.7 billion in compensation is 50% of Goldman’s total revenues for the quarter. The first quarter of last year, compensation ate up just 48% of Goldman’s revenues. As Heidi Moore at the Wall Street Journal reports, Goldman’s rising compensation comes despite the fact that the firms has cut its headcount by 7% since the end of last year. That means that the remaining employees are each taking an even bigger slice of the pie.

The size of that compensation set aside will likely annoy current shareholders. After all, it is almost as large as the public offering Goldman is proposing to help it pay back TARP. If Goldman hadn't been so eager to set aside so much revenue to pay its employees, the current shareholders would not need to be diluted as much to pay off the TARP.

To put it slightly differently, the executives at Goldman are basically using the planned offering as a way of paying a special dividend directly into their own pockets.