Bonus pay on track after horrible year

NEW YORK, Jan. 29 (UPI) -- A year of massive bank bailouts did not stop Wall Street executives from collecting $18.4 billion in bonus pay, the New York comptroller said.

Bonus pay doled out for 2008 -- a year of plummeting share values and a $700 billion federal bailout package for financial firms -- was the sixth largest on record, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

New York comptroller Thomas DiNapoli has urged the new administration in Washington to investigate whether or not taxpayer funds were used to fund bonuses, a move many would view as scandalous given the financial firms' recent drag on the economy, the Journal said.

"The issue of transparency is a significant one and there needs to be an accounting about whether there was any taxpayer money used to pay bonuses or to pay for corporate jets or dividends or anything else," DiNapoli said.

Although high from an historical perspective, bonus pay declined 44 percent from 2007, when bonus pay reached $32.9 billion, the Journal said.