Obama slams Wall Street bonuses

President Barack Obama says that multi-billion dollar bonuses taken by Wall Street bankers are "shameful" while taxpayers bail out their industry.

The president said their actions "were the height of irresponsibility".

He said his administration would tell bankers they needed to show some discipline and restraint.

Mr Obama was responding to reports that employees at financial companies in New York collected an estimated $18.4bn (£12.9bn) in bonuses last year.

"It is shameful, and part of what we are going to need is for the folks on Wall Street who are asking for help to show some restraint and show some discipline and show some sense of responsibility," he added.

"The American people understand that we have got a big hole we have got to dig ourselves out of but they don't like the idea that people are digging a bigger hole."

Earlier this week, US bank Citigroup cancelled an order for a new corporate jet after President Obama questioned the wisdom of the purchase.

The White House asked whether buying the jet was the "best use of money at this point" for a bank that took $45bn (£31.6bn) of public money last autumn.

Obama wants to know: Why open source?

President Barack Obama is a smart guy. Where others zig, he zags. It's perhaps not surprising, then, that he's been asking around about the benefits of open source, according to Sun Chairman Scott McNealy, who has been asked by President Obama to author a white paper on the benefits the U.S. government can derive from open source.

McNealy, cited in a BBC News story, wasn't shy in identifying them:

It's intuitively obvious open source is more cost effective and productive than proprietary software....The government ought to mandate open-source products based on open-source reference implementations to improve security, get higher-quality software, lower costs, higher reliability--all the benefits that come with open software.

While I agree with those benefits, I'm not a supporter of mandates. I wouldn't want the government mandating Microsoft software--why would I therefore seek an open-source mandate? Open source has done remarkably well in the U.S. federal government without mandates, and will continue to do so because of the benefits identified by McNealy.

Will President Obama listen? I suspect he's more likely to do so. He'll get plenty of lobbyist cash from technology companies like Microsoft, but with few companies now solely dependent on proprietary software (indeed, I'd argue that there aren't any left), open source is going to be on everyone's agenda.

For other positions on McNealy's open-source suggestions, see The 451 Group's Matt Aslett's blog and OStatic.