[SkyMarshal]

>The only valid reason for people to be mad is because tax-payer money was used to provide them with liquidity during the financial crisis. That money has since been paid back (with interest),

Was the $800B stimulus paid back? What about the two (and counting) rounds of QE the Fed has implemented (there will be consequences to such huge intervention, it's just not clear exactly what yet)? The financial crisis cost us a great deal more than just TARP.

[littlegiantcap]

The stimulus mostly went to states, I'm not sure if any of it even went to Goldman Sachs. I'm also not sure it's entirely fair to say 1 bank's compensation package should be called into question because of a worldwide recession. Let the shareholders decide what's appropriate.

[SkyMarshal]

It doesn't matter where the stimulus went, but the fact that it was needed at all to prevent (or forestall) a second Great Depression. Of course, the whole idea behind the stimulus was to keep people paying their mortgages so that the trillions of MBS's in the system wouldn't default and bankrupt the banks, pensions, and whatever else had bought them over the years. Basically, another form of bailout for the banking system.

[thematt]

Nonsense, it absolutely does matter. The government gave them money and they paid it back with interest, end of story. If you think the banks should continually be "punished" for some indeterminate amount of time as a result of economic conditions they may or may not have caused, then that should have been a condition of accepting the money...but it wasn't. So go complain to your congressman, your senator or your president, but as far as I can tell the recipients followed the letter of the law...so I have no bone to pick with them now.