Because it needs to be repeated:

Cash bonuses for Wall Street bankers rose by 17% to $20.3bn (£13.2bn) in 2009, figures have shown.

The data, from the New York state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, also said that profits at the firms could be in excess of $55bn for last year.

Mr DiNapoli added that the payouts were a "bitter pill" and "hard to comprehend" for American taxpayers who had bailed out Wall Street firms.

The nub of the accusation against Geithner for his first role in the drama, while president of the New York Fed, is that he failed to drive a hard bargain with AIG's big bank customers on taxpayers' behalf once authorities had decided to nationalize the company (itself an unprecedented act, because AIG is an insurer, not a bank).

Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and others had purchased from AIG what is, to most people, a bizarre kind of insurance: If your investment loses too much value, we'll cover your losses. Because AIG was offering insurance based on the price of houses, and because—as we all know—the price of houses never goes down, AIG didn't think it was necessary to set aside any cash to pay out on the policies as you might in the event of, say, a hurricane. They just took the banks' insurance premiums—the infamous credit default swaps—and paid themselves a shitload of money. When the hurricane arrived in the form of REALITY, Goldman etc. had billions in mortgage-related losses and they wanted their insurance company to pay for the damage. Only now, their insurance company had no money and was owned by you and me.

Trying to resolve this impasse, the Fed said to the banks, essentially, "We can't pay for the damage, but if you'll agree to rip up your insurance policy, we'll buy your damaged property." This at a time when the banks couldn't have sold a mortgage-backed security to a 15-year-old on peyote. "Yes," the banks said to the Fed. "That sounds good."

The question is, why did we pay full price for the damaged goods? Given that the banks had been speculating and would under normal circumstances assume the risk of their insurer going bankrupt, why did American taxpayers step into the breach and make Goldman and others whole at a time when millions were losing their savings and their jobs?