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The Contra Costa Times reported on Friday that Solyndra has asked its bankruptcy judge to pay remaining employees up to $500,000 in bonuses.

The article points out:

Senior executives at Solyndra collected hefty quarterly bonuses — ranging from $37,000 to $60,000 apiece, with some executives receiving both rounds of bonuses — within six months of the company’s closure last August, when about 1,100 workers were laid off without severance.

According to the article, the bonuses requested would “go to workers lower on the food chain than the sizable bonuses handed out to key executives in the months before the company’s bankruptcy — 13 of the 21 possible recipients the Associated Press listed were equipment engineers and facilities workers.”

There are a few things at work here. What kind of responsible executive takes a huge bonus as the company is going under? What about taking the bonus and then laying off workers without severance? I am all in favor of people making money–I just think we need to bring the concept of ethics back into our business model.

The kind of abuses we have seen in the financial sector of our economy will not be fixed by increased regulation–they are indications of a lack of morality and accountability that is currently running rampant in our society. Until we get back to our national roots as a Judeo-Christian country, we are not going to solve our problems–financial or otherwise. The reason the Ten Commandments were posted in our schools was to let students know that at some point in their lives they would have to answer to a higher authority. When we removed the concept of a higher authority, we opened the door for the financial collapse that we have seen. When our financial moguls do not realize that they are accountable for their behavior, they don’t bother to play by the rules.