A former Goldman Sachs partner who teaches in NY thinks Wall Street bonuses are necessary to incentivize traders and financial innovation. There's a shocker.

Perhaps having a chance of keeping your business alive and keeping a paycheck coming -- the incentives everyone else in the known capitalist universe relies upon -- will be enough until you've, maybe, paid back all the farkin' taxpayer money we've had to pony up to keep your sorry-ass casino-based financial insanities from destroying the known capitalist universe.

These Hank Paulson cronies make me want to hurl.

You can say one thing: These guys really have encouraged rope manufacturing, though.

umployed?

In non-bizarro-world, bonuses are usually given for good performance.

beve: In non-bizarro-world, bonuses are usually given for good performance.

This. There is nothing wrong with a massive bonus for an executive at a company that ISN'T begging for taxpayer money just to stay alive.

I don't think anyone, even the liberal bogeymen, are saying otherwise.

1. You make too much money.

2. Give it to me the government.

3. Maybe they'll give it to me?

beve: In non-bizarro-world, bonuses are usually given for good performance.

On Wall Street, bonuses are usually considered part of the salary and are possibly a consequence of changes to the tax code in 1993.

Norad: umployed?

It's the umpires union.

furiousxgeorge: This. There is nothing wrong with a massive bonus for an executive at a company that ISN'T begging for taxpayer money just to stay alive.

That. It's the main reason I didn't care that Lee Raymond got such a huge retirement package from Exxon. The company flourished under his leadership.

His chin, however, did not.



/very VERY few places where bonuses should be mandatory

Last One Left: and are possibly a consequence of changes to the tax code in 1993.

no matter how you cut it, it still boils down to greed and entitlement.

Investment banks MUST remain private!!! This all unraveled when they became public.

You have to have a 20-30 year stake in a firm to make these investments.

Greed, with a long-term outlook, is good.

There is so much clean-up work to do. What a mess.

I make this pledge to the world and to Fark at large: Pay me just one $500,000 bonus, and I will never, ever screw up a major investment bank.

Hell, I'll refrain from screwing up even a MINOR investment bank for $100K... hehe

This About That: I make this pledge to the world and to Fark at large: Pay me just one $500,000 bonus, and I will never, ever screw up a major investment bank.

I'll do it for half that.

Aarontology: This About That: I make this pledge to the world and to Fark at large: Pay me just one $500,000 bonus, and I will never, ever screw up a major investment bank.

I'll do it for half that.

That minus a dollar!!!!

FishyFred: His chin, however, did not.

It's a little known fact that he became a cattle auctioneer in his spare time after he retired. It didn't last long, as he was constantly interrupted by what sounded like 8 people clapping.

/got nuthin'
//he's got nuthin' but chin
///butt chin

when will the moneychangers be cast out of the penthouse and into the hole?

The sense of entitlement in TFA is disturbing. These people honestly don't understand why the rest of the country is upset with their mindset.

MorrisBird: The sense of entitlement in TFA is disturbing. These people honestly don't understand why the rest of the country is upset with their mindset.

THIS.

FTA: Lost in the denunciations were the powerful benefits of the bonus system, which helped make the U.S. the global leader in financial services for decades.

Most of us-like it or not, concerning out jobs/work-are only as good as out last effort. I don't know why they shouldn't be, too. Especially when their last efforts would be like me dumping a plate of pasta on a diners head.

The capital-markets industry operates in a very sophisticated and competitive environment

Translation: we are much better than you and if you don't kiss our ass we'll take our magic decoder rings and go!

Finance is no longer a "legacy" job. Can we all at least agree on that?

These people are crazy.

I'm not ashamed to say that I am a victim of the economy. I have no shame left. I owned my own software development business, mostly I designed custom shopping cart and payment systems for small businesses who wanted to sell stuff online. It went great for many years -- until the economy tanked.

Now nobody has any money to spend and no small businesses are looking to expand, they're all looking to minimize costs. My business went down the drain, I lost my house to foreclosure in October, now I rent a room from my parents. If not for their help I'd be homeless. I'm unemployed and not eligible for unemployment benefits (being previously self-employed) so I have zero income. My bank account is overdrawn. I can't even buy a pack of gum.

Been looking for a job non-stop for 3 months (I have to borrow money for gas), but few places are hiring and the competition is fierce with so many unemployed. I have a dozen creditors hounding me daily, and I might lose my car soon.

All I want to do is work and pay my bills, and eventually become independent again. I'll take a job for $9 an hour to start, I'll work any days, any time shift. But I can't even get that. Wal-Mart isn't even hiring, nor are the 50 other places I've tried.

And this asshole thinks I should feel compassionate for the executives who have had to bear the soul-crushing witness to their stock portfolios falling from a billion dollars to only 300 million, a massive 70% loss! How in the world can they live on a net worth of only $300 million? And therefore, they should be entitled to their multi-million dollar bonuses. After all, they need to eat, too. Right?

log_jammin: no matter how you cut it, it still boils down to greed and entitlement.

In a lot of instances, yeah. I just wanted to point out they're not all "extra" benefits.

Compensation for top managers followed the trend into excess set by other public companies. Competition for talent made recruitment and retention more difficult and thus tilted negotiating power further in favor of stars. Henry Paulson, when he was CEO of Goldman Sachs, once remarked that Wall Street was like other businesses, where 80% of the profits were provided by 20% of the people, but the 20% changed a lot from year to year and market to market. You had to pay everyone well because you never knew what next year would bring, and because there was always someone trying to poach your best trained people, whom you didn't want to lose even if they were not superstars. Consequently, bonuses in general became more automatic and less tied to superior performance. Compensation became the industry's largest expense, accounting for about 50% of net revenues.

Sounds to me like there was a "bubble" in Wall Street compensation. And if anyone knows what happens when a bubble pops, it's Wall Street, right?

/
//Good luck Epsilon! This too shall pass!

Epsilon: These people are crazy.

I'm not ashamed to say that I am a victim of the economy. I have no shame left. I owned my own software development business, mostly I designed custom shopping cart and payment systems for small businesses who wanted to sell stuff online. It went great for many years -- until the economy tanked.

Now nobody has any money to spend and no small businesses are looking to expand, they're all looking to minimize costs. My business went down the drain, I lost my house to foreclosure in October, now I rent a room from my parents. If not for their help I'd be homeless. I'm unemployed and not eligible for unemployment benefits (being previously self-employed) so I have zero income. My bank account is overdrawn. I can't even buy a pack of gum.

Been looking for a job non-stop for 3 months (I have to borrow money for gas), but few places are hiring and the competition is fierce with so many unemployed. I have a dozen creditors hounding me daily, and I might lose my car soon.

All I want to do is work and pay my bills, and eventually become independent again. I'll take a job for $9 an hour to start, I'll work any days, any time shift. But I can't even get that. Wal-Mart isn't even hiring, nor are the 50 other places I've tried.

And this asshole thinks I should feel compassionate for the executives who have had to bear the soul-crushing witness to their stock portfolios falling from a billion dollars to only 300 million, a massive 70% loss! How in the world can they live on a net worth of only $300 million? And therefore, they should be entitled to their multi-million dollar bonuses. After all, they need to eat, too. Right?

I feel ya, buddy. All I can do is stay up all night and write code that NOBODY WANTS. Whee. Must code....

I'm *supposed* to get unemployment, but they've been dragging their feet for months.

If you don't see me after March 1st, you know what happened. Wish me luck :\

log_jammin: Last One Left: and are possibly a consequence of changes to the tax code in 1993.

no matter how you cut it, it still boils down to greed and entitlement.

Still, that's one helluva "But, but, but Clinton...". 10/10 for our original troll.

You know, the other side of success is failure.
The other side of intelligence is stupidity.

These guys expect to be rewarded for failure AND stupidity.

never mind the 500K, someone give me a shovel
and i'll slap these greedy fecks upside the head
and charge them for it. reciprocation, revenge,
whatever...the mind boggles at the lack of
empathy, it's this kind of prick that abuses
waiters to embiggen themselves in front of their
friends, if they have any...

The author of TFA is a douchebag.

He even uses himself as an example:

I was a 35-year-old, nonpartner investment banker then and was horrified to learn that my annual take-home pay would be limited to my small salary, which accounted for about a quarter of my previous year's income.

Uhhh, hey, moron, how about, maybe, I dunno, budgeting your lifestyle around, maybe, WHAT YOU ARE GETTING AS YOUR FARKING SALARY, NOT ON WHAT YOU THINK YOU WILL RECEIVE AS BONUSES.

I swear, this guy reminds me of someone else:

As of February 16th I'll no longer be one of the unemployed (one month collecting unemployment after a layoff). It's about an 11% pay cut but thats just fine with me at this point. CEO bonuses are just totally out of control. Hell, when I got laid off I should have asked for a $50 million parachute!

/thrilled to be workin again soon
//good thing, too since we are moving next week to a place with higher rent!

I'm looking fo' a jobbyjob too!

I'm a temp where I work and the only thing saving me at the moment is that I was budgeted in through the end of this quarter, which means I have less than 3 months to find a new job. The company is under a hiring freeze so I can't go full time, and my department is short staffed, which is why I managed to remain past the hiring freeze.

Last month I interviewed with two companies. One was two dollars an hour more than I make now plus bonuses and travel along with benefits like health insurance and vacation which I currently don't get as a temp. He said, "You're good, you're skilled, you're experienced, we could use you, and if you were unemployed I'd hire you on the spot." which I have taken to mean they interviewed someone after me who was unemployed and he was hired.

Another one I went on, I interviewed with them 3 times in one week. Met 7 people during those interviews. The conversation on the last day of interviewing shifted from "If you worked for us..." to "When you start here..." I though the job was mine. An extra $1000/month if I got that job. Was told "You'll hear from us in a day or two." as of Thursday it will be two weeks. At that point I'll assume I wasn't chosen.

One thing that gets me is that right now it's the perfect employer's market. They can be as picky as they want to be, and it's showing in the job ads. There was one they wanted an electrician to do their electrical work, IT support and install security equipment. Have a journeymen's license but preferred a master's license. $15/hour. In this area, good luck finding an apprentice to work for $15/hour. And I know several electricians, none of them are savvy enough to fill in that IT support part they want.

Ah, banks. One of the biggest scams going. Right up there with religion and the De Beers' stranglehold on diamonds.

They make investments off our money, get large payouts from those investments, give us a mere pittance in the way of interest and then nickle and dime us on service charges when we actually have the nerve to want access to our money. That saying about lawyers at the bottom of the ocean goes equally well for bankers.

I think there's a bit too much hype about the effect of the economy on unemployment levels these days. I don't know of anyone whose job was affected by the so-called "recession". In fact, I see hundreds of people with good steady jobs on a daily basis. From the fellow who parks my solid gold Bentley at the country club to the chap who cuts the grass on my 50 acre country estate, clearly even the dregs of society are able to find gainful employment.

/excuse me while I go have my monocle polished

/facepalm for the headline

I'm not trying to defend the amount of money these guys get. I believe pay should be for performance and these guys clearly haven't. The notion of the government bailing them out is repugnant. These guys can only defend their bonuses in light of the fact that the government limits the amount of salary that is exempt from business taxes. Thus, they view bonuses as a legitimate part of their compensation package. It is this sense of entitlement that is the problem.

Having said that, I believe that investment bankers, market fund managers and their ilk should be compensated only a percentage of the gain of the fund. For example, if I invest a million dollars with you, you should be compensated only, say 10% of the profit you make for me. You get me 10% return on my investment and you make $10,000. So you better be good enough to get a few more folks to invest with you if you want to make money. Folks like Epsilon get paid only if they work and only if there is a demand for their work. He is probably very good at what he was doing but there is no demand and the poor guy has lost everything. If he had never been any good at it, he never would have made any money to begin with.

These bankers are obviously not any good at what they were doing, otherwise they wouldn't have lost so much money. Yeah, there was the housing bubble and Fannie and Freddie but they were dumb enough to buy into it in spite of the fact that every intelligent person I talked to had denounced that scam as unsustainable almost 10 years ago. Now they've taken the whole economy with them. For this, they should be penniless, not arguing about bonuses.

Note the difference between the money guys and the oil guys. Oil prices spiked and the oil execs had little control. They made tons of money but it is only a percentage of gross revenues, which were obviously up because of the price. The economy struggled, folks paid more for gas, we even had fuel surcharges for pizza deliveries but we were still working, still moving the economy. Price of oil goes back down, oil profits are down in gross dollars (but not as a percentage) and things would have gotten back to normal except that the house of cards called the mortgage industry started to wiggle a little bit and one card collapsing brings down the whole house.

The oil execs were grilled before Congress, which ultimately could do nothing to them. How many bankers and money execs have been hauled before Congress? How many of them will have charges filed against them? Is everyone involved in the management of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac going to be investigated with an eye toward criminal prosecution? No, their friends in Congress are more worried about bailing them out. Is there some sort of connection here we should be looking into?

It'd funny to see people argue why CEOs need big bonuses. It's like seeing a fire argue against oxygen.

From TFA: "Bonuses are an important and necessary part of the fast-moving, high-pressure industry, and its employees flourish with strong performance incentives."

What farking world do these people live in? In the real world, your incentive to do well is that you want to KEEP YOUR JOB, with the added bonus of a possible RAISE every year or so, if you're lucky. What would be the problem with their system working like that?

I saved my company over $10,000 last year by suggesting a different version of graphics software for a particular pool of employees who had different needs than that graphic artists, and could get by with less powerful versions of the software we use. You know what I expected? A good evaluation write up, continued employment, an extra percent or so in my raise packet for that year, and a hearty handshake. That's it.

Where the motherfark do these people get off whining that they won't get a six figure bonus on top of their mid/high six figure salaries?


/looks like I'm going to be using this a lot

From tfa "The capital-markets industry operates in a very sophisticated and competitive environment"

Apparently it was too sophisticated for the bozos who were running it, so no more bonuses for them.

They whine any more, give 'em the Marie Antoinette haircut.

GuidoDelConfuso

I think there's a bit too much hype about the effect of the economy on unemployment levels these days. I don't know of anyone whose job was affected by the so-called "recession". In fact, I see hundreds of people with good steady jobs on a daily basis. From the fellow who parks my solid gold Bentley at the country club to the chap who cuts the grass on my 50 acre country estate, clearly even the dregs of society are able to find gainful employment.

/excuse me while I go have my monocle polished

Excuse me, Sir, Would you have any Grey Poupon?

Scorched Colon: Ah, banks. One of the biggest scams going. Right up there with religion and the De Beers' stranglehold on diamonds.

They make investments off our money, get large payouts from those investments, give us a mere pittance in the way of interest and then nickle and dime us on service charges when we actually have the nerve to want access to our money. That saying about lawyers at the bottom of the ocean goes equally well for bankers.

When I was a young teenager there was a fellow one of my uncles knew who had spent a good portion of his life making a whole town-like tableaux on a chunk of his farm completely out of concrete. That includes people, cars, buildings, etc. In so many ways this fellow was simply bat-shiat crazy. But he would rail long and loudly against bankers, lawyers and insurance companies as being parasites on society and making money only by preying on the insecurities of honest working people, after those bastards (in his words) had done everything they could to create those very insecurities. The older I get, the more convinced I am that he was a lot less crazy than we used to think.

GuidoDelConfuso: I think there's a bit too much hype about the effect of the economy on unemployment levels these days.

I started to reply with this..

" Both the number of unemployed persons (11.6 million) and the unemployment
rate (7.6 percent) rose in January. Over the past 12 months, the number of un-
employed persons has increased by 4.1 million and the unemployment rate has
risen by 2.7 percentage points. "

and then I seen this

GuidoDelConfuso: /excuse me while I go have my monocle polished

good show.

rewind2846: I saved my company over $10,000 last year by suggesting a different version of graphics software for a particular pool of employees who had different needs than that graphic artists, and could get by with less powerful versions of the software we use. You know what I expected? A good evaluation write up, continued employment, an extra percent or so in my raise packet for that year, and a hearty handshake. That's it.


So, did you get that hearty handshake? In a lot of businesses, and probably working for the very bankers who are so whiny about their current lack of bonus, your expectations would have been way too high!

I personally have no problem with profit sharing-based pay. It vests the employee with the success of the company. The employee is motivated to put forth good effort and to make suggestions to improve the bottom line. The employee becomes a huge asset instead of a timecard puncher.

This all applies whether the "employee" is a nobody making a reasonable living or a big time exec.

However, there should be some sort of guarantee or minimum to ensure the employee can survive if there is no company profit to "share". TFA states this guy "was horrified to learn that my annual take-home pay would be limited to my small salary." It's expensive to live in Manhattan. So he needs to be able to continue his employment (unless the company has to do layoffs which is a different story) even if there is no profit.


The second part of this is huge big bonuses. TFA states this guy "was horrified to learn that my annual take-home pay would be limited to my small salary." Somebody tell me why I have a sneaking suspicion that if we learned what his "small" salary was, it would NOT be what most of us consider "small."

The execs should make the sacrifice along with the rest of us. More so than most. Be glad you still have a job, farkhole. That's better than millions of people.

In a profit sharing model, the baseline salary of execs should NOT be millions of dollars. Maybe a couple hundred thousand. And, if the company has no profit, then the execs should get zero bonus, just like everybody else in the company. If the execs are counting on the bonus in order to live in a mansion, then shame on them. They were made a foolish decision. Complaining about it now gets absolutely no sympathy. THIS is why America is fed up with exec bonuses.

Proponents of exec bonuses say they have to guarantee execs big time income in order to attract them to the company. Bull. Napoleon conquered most of Europe with his sergeant-led army.

Today's companies need to do what Napoleon did. That is, get rid of the mindset that only certain people have the experience to lead. Instead of the "aristocracy" being the only ones eligible for positions of leadership, companies need to allow "non-commissioned officers" to do those jobs. So you double their salary. It's still not going to be the millions the execs were paid. And, I guarantee those NCOs have the experience to do the job, and do it well. They've worked with and seen how the current execs do the job, and they also have the experience of being in the "trenches".

This past election, a bunch of whiners were pooping themselves about Socialism. "Spread the wealth!!! Socialism!!! Bad!!!"

A lot of these same people, I can't help but notice, are now defending these gigantic bonuses as inherent to the capitalist ideal.

I'm a capitalist. But I'm also a realist. If this level of arrogance and entitlement continues, socialism...real, actual socialism, not the "mah taxes r too high" socialism...will gain some serious traction in this country.

And that scares the shiat out of me.

All these asshats who have been crying wolf for the last eight to ten years are unwittingly paving the way for the very ideology they're against. Capitalism is the best idea, IMHO, but that's not what has kept this country capitalist. This country has stayed capitalist because it seemed like the fairest, most rational system. That perception takes a gigantic hit every time some rich white guy boo hoos about "only" getting six figures.

As a capitalist, I say: let these farks burn. Not only is that the way this is supposed to work, it will show the rumblers in the peanut gallery that capitalism in general isn't some increasingly thin excuse for the wealthy to piss all over everyone else. If you want to save the free market, stop painting a farking target on its chest by whining about how unfair it is that you "only" made $300,000 this year.

For a so called meritocracy, these people are pretty farking thick.

The_Pole_Of_Justice: For a so called meritocracy

Who has the stones to call it that?

The_Pole_Of_Justice:
A lot of these same people, I can't help but notice, are now defending these gigantic bonuses as inherent to the capitalist ideal.


Bonuses when there has been non-performance is anti-thetical to capitalism. The scam that brought our current crisis was socialism - the bankers and investment brokers were free to play fast and loose with in the MBS market, which drove up the "value" of every other investment instrument in the economy, in the full knowledge that there was no risk because any losses would be covered by the government. It's like going to the track and betting the rent money, knowing that if your longshot comes home you get to keep all the money but if it breaks a leg in the clubhouse turn, the government will give you your money back. If that is what folks are calling capitalism, things have been redefined while we weren't looking!

The_Pole_Of_Justice: A lot of these same people, I can't help but notice, are now defending these gigantic bonuses as inherent to the capitalist ideal.

The capitalist ideal would have been if these companies had been allowed to fail. They paid out the ridiculous bonuses that created the incentives to sell dogshiat mortgages and should pay the price for that.

What we have right now is a disgrace. "Where are people going to get a loan to send their kid to college" my ass. If people didn't have to pay to bail out these organisations, they'd have more sat in their pockets, so would need to borrow less.

And let's remember, a lot of banks didn't follow this course. The likes of Barclays in the UK just didn't get into subprime in a big way.

Occam's Chainsaw: The_Pole_Of_Justice: For a so called meritocracy

Who has the stones to call it that?

Oh, I've heard from people who think the country is a meritocracy. Of course, I have most of those liars on Ignore now..

Looting. A necessary part of the economy and a source of shareholder value.

It's a good thing the Wall Street Journal is a print medium, they'd have a hard time saying this stuff out loud with a straight face.