Wall Street Pit’s Ron Haruni points out that as the banking industry’s stocks plunged this year — with major megabanks like Bank of America facing uncertain fates — their executives have walked away with sky-high salaries.

Haruni cites the work of Rochdale Securities analyst Dick Bove and shows how banks have seen their value and stocks plunge by double-digits while executive compensation remains high:

According to data from Rochdale Securities analyst Dick Bove, the heads of major banking groups including JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Goldman Sachs (GS) and Bank of America (BAC) are out-earning their employees and shareholders even as shares of bank stocks as a group lost about 26% this year.

Bove found that while the 23 financial institutions he follows saw their stock prices and market cap drop by more than 30% and 11%, respectively, bank CEO compensation averaged $7.74 million. That means the banking heads brought in 50 to 100 times the average worker. Take BofA’s CEO Brian Moynihan who will earn $2.26 million this year while his bank’s market value dropped 60% – the worst in Rochdale’s study.

Chase CEO Jamie Dimon will earn $41.9 this year — the most among the bank CEOs in Bove’s coverage list — for a bank that saw its stock lose roughly 23% this year. There’s also Goldman’s Lloyd Blankfein whose compensation was nearly $22 million, while the investment bank he runs – Wall Street’s most powerful — lost more than 46% of its market cap.

Haruni notes that press “reports have suggested that compensation pools at seven of the biggest U.S. banks will total about $156 billion (including salaries, benefits and bonuses) in 2011, which would be 3.7% higher than last year’s record breaking number.”

This Tuesday, Iowans will officially kick off the process to nominate the Republican candidate for president.  A close examination of all of the GOP candidates’ records and policy positions reveals that Mitt Romney is not the only candidate who “represents the one percent.” All of the Republican candidates share at least one thing in common: an economic agenda that will benefit the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans at the expense of the other 99 percent.

Each and every Republican candidate has called for trillions of dollars in new tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans and corporations — all while calling for ending Medicare as we know it and dramatic cuts to Social Security, Medicaid, and countless other programs and services that Americans depend on each day.

All of the candidates would take us back to the Bush-era policies that increased income inequality, resulted in the worst job growth in decades, exploded the deficit and national debt, and ultimately crashed the economy.  Indeed, the policies proposed by the candidates would not only embrace this failed economic agenda, they would take it even further.

Read more