I recently received an email from Robert Greenwald and the Brave New Films team asking me the intriguing question, “What would you do with an extra $18,000 in your pocket?” Greenwald further explains that the $18,000 in cash is supposedly what each and every Burger King employee in America would have received in 2008 if Goldman Sachs (one of the fast-food chain’s largest owners) had shared its bailout billions with rank-and-file workers instead of allowing huge chunks of it to be pocketed by the top company honchos.

It seems that they don’t bother with workman’s grub such as burgers on Wall Street. Allegedly, Goldman Sachs ‘squandered $6.5 billion’ of US taxpayer money, via the bailout, on the much-maligned yet vaunted bonuses for the financial staff. Of course, as we all know well by now (thanks to the explicit ire of Barack Obama calling these ultra-fat bonuses obscene and scandalous in the midst of a reeling financial crisis), Goldman Sachs is but one of the several cases of obscene and scandalous bonuses on Wall Street in 2008, amidst a reeling financial crisis and post-bailout.

On the other hand, poor Burger King workers only earn wages averaging $14,000 a year. Basing it on the federal poverty line for a family of three, this annual income is below poverty line. This, of course, is America. Burger King employees in, say, Asia definitely earn even far below this designated American poverty line threshold. Greenwald’s team is conducting an online poll that will serve as their lobby to ask Goldman Sachs to return the bailout money.

It never ceases to astound me how Wall Street has become so savvy. I’ve always been amazed at the financial maneuvering tactics and wizardry of financial people. I’ve also heard that they won’t go to heaven.

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