News

Just to be clear, Barack Obama still thinks Wall Street's cats are fat. The White House was quick to issue a rebuttal to a Bloomberg News report that said the U.S. President doesn't "begrudge" the multimillion-dollar bonuses paid to the chief executive officers of bailed-out U.S. banks. The White House says the story wrongly made it sound as if Mr. Obama "applauded the role of bankers" and "brushed off the impact of the bonuses."

"This naturally came as a surprise to the many people who share his outrage at the behaviour that continues on Wall Street and is not an accurate portrayal of where the President stands or what he said during the interview," the White House said in a statement that included a transcript of Mr. Obama's quotes.

In the interview with Bloomberg, Mr. Obama said he was "shocked" at the $17-million (U.S.) stock bonuses given to JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon and the $9-million awarded to Goldman's Lloyd Blankfein. "Of course, there are some baseball players who are making more than that who don't get to the World Series either. So I'm shocked by that as well."

For Mr. Obama's benefit, here is a list of the Major League Baseball players who made more than Jamie Dimon in 2009, and didn't make the World Series:

Manny Ramirez

$23.8-million

Carlos Beltran

$19.2-million

Carlos Lee

$19-million

Magglio Ordonez

$18.9-million

Johan Santana

$18.8-million

Barry Zito

$18.5-million

Torii Hunter

$18-million

Ichiro Suzuki

$18-million