He needs a $10,000,000 bonus for doing his job? I'll be sure to use that one when I talk to my boss about a raise.

There is a real disconnect between heavy Republican koolaid drinkers and the rest of us.

Sell us your children. Our cleaning lady is pregnant. We'll give you 20 bucks a week.

Could any of this have been sold as fiction ten years ago?

Senator, you can have my answer now if you like. My offer is this -- nothing. Not even the million-dollar salary, which I would appreciate you reducing to $1/year personally.

Seriously, is this a joke? So he sold ML after it was clear the alternative was being Lehman Brothers, the sequel. It's not like this was all-that-challenging of a decision. If he won't work without a bonus, fuck him. It's not like there aren't thousands of out-of-work bankers and traders ready to replace him.

Next year, Merrill will be under a different Board as a unit of BofA. This looks like a classic example of the "final period" problem; they are looting the company with no repurcussions. I hope the current directors are watching this and cognizant of their obligations and threats of lawsuits (and that they might not get the business judgment protections).

assholes like Thain are starting to make violent revolution sound perfectly reasonable.

Up against the wall, motherfucker.

What a company's shareholders do when an executive demands more compensation is really their business only.

But I'm happy that Merrill's have resolved to tell this guy to pound sand. You came in, saw your company floundering, and sold it at a fire-sale price to the highest bidder. Damn. I guess that's the kind of lateral thinking that separates a Harvard MBA from the rest of us.

If any other company is in this position, I'd be willing to let them move the CEO's customary salary a decimal place to the right and forego my bonus for overseeing a surrender to market forces. Please post here at TPM with contact information, and I will respond within minutes.

My answer: Hell no.
He has enough money to live in comfort for the rest of his (with any luck, unemployed and unemployable) life.

The excuse we've heard for this kind of package has been, for years, that it's needed to attract good executives. Well, it's clear that it attracted a lot of bad executives, and they're still getting the big pay packages. F*ck that: they shouldn't get those if they run the businesses into the ground.

I'd be willing to go with an amendment - a law probably won't do it - limiting annual pay to a maximum of, say, 100 times the federal minimum annual wage or the presidential salary, whichever is higher. (It's not as high as it sounds. Really.)

"Mr. Thain's decision to sell Merrill likely salvaged billions of dollars for shareholders"

Like, he had a choice, right? Let see, sell to the only company offering or shutdown the company.. Yep, gotta be worth 10 million..

I have a feeling there is going to be a shareholder revolt if this guy gets his bonus.

Lots of shareholders are taxpayers too, who are paying to bail out these idiots.

Wow, the stones on this guy.

Call me crazy, but like you guys said, a bonus is usually a cut of the increased profits you took that year, as a way of saying "thanks for making this extra money".

This is hard to swallow, but based on the dire situation facing the entire financial sector and the blind greed that has taken over, not hard to believe.

New GRE antonym question:
THAIN:
a)intelligent
b)deserving
c)awesome guy
d)dirtbag

I think we taxpayers should write him a check. It will trickle back down to us eventually.