In December 2008, ending its worst year ever with a $25 billion loss, Merrill Lynch rewarded its executives with a whopping $3.6 billion in bonuses. Just before being bought by Bank of America, which received $45 billion of taxpayers’ money to bail it out, and part of their trouble was the huge losses they bought with Merrill Lynch, that continued to to grow ever since. The $3.6 billion paid in bonuses put the troubled Merill Lynch exactly that much deeper in the hole, effectively channeling billions of dollars…