....Kasich made $1.4 million in 2008—including $265,000 as a Fox News contibutor and $590,000 (his bonus was $432,000) from the doomed Lehman....
....While Ohio was suffering through the Bush years and into the "Great Recession," Kasich was on Wall Street, raking in the dough from a firm that participated (as almost all of them did) in the enormously risky bets that drove the economy to ruin. It's not that Kasich profited from Lehman's collapse. He wasn't short-selling his own bank's stock (as far as we know.) It's that he made his fortune and got out while everyone else paid the price for his firm's bad behavior.
Journalists will likely push Kasich to release the rest of his returns—the limited disclosure definitely makes it seem like he's hiding something—and then to try to force the candidate to go beyond talking about pay and explain what, exactly, he was doing at Lehman. Kasich claims he was not a top decision-maker at Lehman. So was he the classic ex-politico at the investment bank, a la Harold Ford, basically a lobbyist in disguise? Or was he doing something else entirely?
How many people in Ohio have ever received a bonus of several hundred thousand dollars? In the hot shot, big ego world of Wall Street, it might be normal for people to profit even when companies are hitting the skids. Kasich thinks that people will now stop talking about his connection to Lehman Brothers. This little bit of information may actually help defeat Kasich because he profited while the country's economic situation was headed down the tubes.
Besides, what does a person do to get a $432,000 bonus????????