Reuters and Business Week are doing their best to stoke populist outrage over the fact that some Wall Street firms paid out bonuses this year. If they have a point, you wouldn’t know it from their published reports, which never ask (much less answer) the fundamental question: How much of this money is being paid out to executives at firms that took federal bailout money?

Why should anybody care if a firm such as Lazard, which has taken no TARP money (and which in fact has been unfairly disadvantaged by the bailouts of rivals) pays out bonuses? Why is that Obama’s business, or anybody else’s? If Reuters and Business Week mean to say that this money is being paid out to workers at firms that are currently on the dole, then they should write that–and tell us which banks they mean. (There is one passing reference to Merrill, but no specifics.)

Instead of the information we need, we get this thin gruel:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama believes the multi-billion dollar bonuses that Wall Street banks awarded themselves for 2008 are “outrageous”, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said on Thursday.
The New York comptroller reported this week that Wall Street firms paid out $18.4 billion (12.8 billion pounds) in bonuses to employees, despite receiving multi-billion dollar payouts from the government to save them from collapse in the face of the worst financial crisis in decades.
Gibbs told a news conference that Obama had a one-word reply when he heard of the reports: “outrageous”.

Which banks, Reuters? Their story doesn’t say. It matters, doesn’t it? Because it’s only ”outrageous” if it’s a misuse of taxpayer dollars, no? It’s not as though Wall Street is one big business with one big shared pot o’ federal gold.

Bloomberg, perhaps the only service worth reading when it comes to financial news, has a bit more.

What’s especially galling about this cheap mob-mongering from Business Week and Reuters is that TARP imposed restrictions on what bonuses could be paid to the bigwigs at the firms that are taking Uncle Sam’s dime. That means that the bonuses in question aren’t going to the CEOs and such, but to Wall Street worker-bees. Which is why the bonuses we’re talking about here are, on average, about $100,000–nothing to sneeze at, certainly, but not gazillionaire bucks, either. Low- to mid-level Wall Streeters don’t earn huge salaries, because most of their compensation comes in the form of an annual bonus. Paying people well to do good work isn’t “outrageous” or “greed.” (If Wal-Mart decided to give all its associates a bonus, even though it’s been a hard year in retail, would we call those workers “greedy”?)

Obama should consider that these “outrageous” bonuses are about one-third of what his wife was paid in her last sinecure. But don’t wait on Business Week to point that out.