Just In Case You Were Wondering What The Banks Are Doing With Your Bailout Money...
Here's one answer...having a golf tournament, accepting swag, and gorging themselves at private dinner parties. Yep, while you're eating ramen noodles and wondering just how in the world you're going to catch up on your mortgage payments after you were laid off from the job you've slaved at for ten years, bank bigshots are having a high old time playing Caddyshack:
The Chicago-based Northern Trust bank may have received $1.6 billion in federal bailout funds, but that did not dampen the lavish long weekend featuring a golf tournament and headliner music the bank threw in Los Angeles last week, much of which was caught on tape by the celebrity news outlet TMZ. Critics are up in arms over yet another apparent boondoggle hosted by a bank that received federal bailout funds. [...]This is the second year in a row that the bank has hosted the Northern Trust Open, a golf tournament held at the Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades. The bank described it as "an integral part of Northern Trust's global marketing activities". But according to TMZ, the parties surrounding the event featured multiple rock concerts, gift bags from Tiffany's, and private dinner parties at luxury hotels.
TMZ's cameras were rolling when Sheryl Crow took the stage at the House of Blues in West Hollywood for a small private party.
They also took video of the band Chicago performing at the Ritz-Carlton after a dinner hosted by Northern Trust.
Northern Trust says it did not approach the federal government for bailout funds, but rather "agreed to the government's goal of gaining the participation of all major banks in the United States."
Their reasoning? Well, you just gave us the money, we didn't ask for it:
"The key point is Northern Trust is a business that earned an operating net income of $641 million last year," said senior vice-president Douglas Holt. "We paid for these events ourselves. They were paid for as part of a business decision regarding an annual event to show appreciation for clients. Northern Trust is not a bank that was or is losing money and therefore had to go to the government for assistance."But the bank took a strikingly different tone in December when it announced it would eliminate 450 jobs.
"The macroeconomic environment has been extraordinarily difficult and has impacted all segments of the global economy," said the bank's CEO Frederick Waddell.
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