Wall Street executives seeking multimillion-dollar bonuses, and the leaders of Detroit’s Big Three automakers who last week flew to Washington aboard private jets to ask Congress for a bailout, are “tone deaf” to the concerns of the American people, President-elect Barack Obama said.
Obama said “captains of industry” on Wall Street and in Detroit who took advantage of corporate perks while their companies benefited from government loans paid for with taxpayers’ money, don’t have “any perspective on what’s happening to ordinary Americans.”
Asked if bank executives should forgo their bonuses , Obama said, “I think they should.”
“That’s an example of taking responsibility. 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, because I recognize that there are people who are a lot less well off, who are going through some pretty tough times,’” the president-elect added.
“One of the worst things I think that could happen to a president is losing touch with what people are going through day to day ... ” he said. “I want to make sure that I keep my finger on the pulse of the struggles that people are going through every day.”
| 
|