Obama says bank execs should forego bonuses

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. banking executives should forgo big bonuses since the economy is faltering and hundreds of thousands of workers face job cuts, President-elect Barack Obama said in an ABC News interview airing on Wednesday.

Asked whether bank executives should forgo their bonuses, Obama said: "I think they should." He also said it would show they are taking responsibility.

"I think that if you are already worth tens of millions of dollars, and you are having to lay off workers, the least you can do is say, I'm willing to make some sacrifice as well," Obama said.

Executive bonuses have been strongly criticized as U.S. taxpayers, suffering the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, question the U.S. Treasury Department's $700 billion bailout of the financial industry, which played a large role in creating the crisis.

In the wide-ranging interview, Obama was asked what he thought about the heads of the Big Three U.S. automakers taking private planes to Washington last week to ask Congress for a bailout.

Their actions show that the CEOs were "a little tone deaf" to what is happening in America, Obama said, adding that it was a chronic problem, and not just for the auto industry.

"I think it's been a problem for the captains of industry generally," Obama said.

"When people are pulling down hundred-million-dollar bonuses on Wall Street, and taking enormous risks with other people's money, that indicates a sense that you don't have any perspective on what's happening to ordinary Americans."

Obama said on Monday that his economic team was working on the details of a package to save or create 2.5 million jobs and urged the next Congress to act on it in early January.

(Writing by Joanne Allen)