Hank Paulson says bankers’ paychecks ‘out of whack’ with rest of country

Banker compensation is out of tune with the public sentiment towards banks and their role in the financial crisis, former US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson told CNBC in an interview.

The government poured hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars into financial institutions to keep them afloat during the worst financial crisis since World War II, but this was done for the people who would have had to endure an even worse crisis had the whole system collapsed on them, Paulson said.

Paulson has a new book on the crisis called “On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System.”

“What I say in the book is that when I ran with Goldman Sachs, even during benign times, I had felt the compensation in the industry seemed out of whack, and I would occasionally go off in partners meetings and say something to the effect, ‘I hope you guys all understand,’ and remind them, ‘people don’t like you. Very few people do,’” Paulson told CNBC.

Full story: Bankers’ Paychecks ‘Out of Whack’: Henry Paulson – CNBC