Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported that A 123 Systems, the bankrupt recipient of Obama’s department of energy loan, now wants to pay top executives more than four million dollars.
“A123 Systems Inc., the electric car battery maker that filed for Chapter 11 last week after receiving nearly $250 million in government grants, wants to pay more than $4 million in bonuses to a handful of top executives.
The company is asking Judge Kevin Carey of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., to sign off on incentive bonuses totaling up to $4.1 million for nine key employees, including several company insiders---namely, corporate officers and directors---pending the sale of its assets at a bankruptcy auction.”
Well done, Mr. Obama. We will use some of the $132 million given to A 123 Systems to reward their top executives, who could never deliver an affordable lithium ion battery!
But hold on. Was it not Mr. Obama who attacked the bonuses for executives at banks that received bailouts in 2008? Of course Mr. Obama opined on the matter of these executives being given bonuses. The New York Times on January 29, 2009 quoted Obama as saying:
“There will be time for them to make profits, and there will be time for them to get bonuses,” Mr. Obama said during an appearance in the Oval Office with Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner. Now’s not that time. And that’s a message that I intend to send directly to them, I expect Secretary Geithner to send to them.”
