Stop Wall Street Bonuses!
Wall Street should nix their bonus programs this year. There’s simply no way to justify them given their performance and hundreds of billions in taxpayer funded bailouts. For example:
Citigroup, which received $25 billion from the government last month, has reported $26 billion in expenses for compensation and benefits in the first nine months of 2008, up 4 percent from the same period a year ago. The New York-based bank has reported four consecutive quarterly losses.
Compensation up 4% year over year with 4 straight quarterly loses. Sounds like the employees and management at Citigroup are really sharing in the pain.
Sadly, nobody on Wall Street understands that bonuses should be linked to performance:
At Goldman Sachs (GS) the figure was $11.4 billion, Morgan Stanley (MS) $10.73 billion, JPMorgan (JPM) $6.53 billion and Merrill Lynch (MER) $11.7 billion. At Morgan Stanley, the amount put aside for staff compensation also grew in the last quarter to the end of August by 3% to $3.7 billion.
With the exception of JP Morgan, these firms are down huge this year. I have no idea what makes any of them think they deserve bonuses. They’re basically looting taxpayer money that was suppose to be used to make loans and shore up balance sheets.
Ordinarily, I adhere to free market principles, but clearly these compensation schemes have no grounding in reality. Therefore, I hope somebody (Congress) steps in and puts a stop to it. You simply can’t let these pigs continue feeding at the trough given the wreckage left in their wake.
Archived in: bailout, bonuses, Congress, Wall StreetNovember 11, 2008 at 10:21 am | Trackback
5 comments
And that on the heels of yet another lavish AIG retreat while begging for more government dollars:
http://www.azcentral.com/arizo.....t1111.html
what do you make of this article (besides the fact that it’s elitist and bigoted?) NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11.....south.html
The Republicans, meanwhile, have “become a Southernized party,” said Mr. Schaller, who teaches at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. “They have completely marginalized themselves to a mostly regional party,” he said, pointing out that nearly half of the current Republican House delegation is now Southern.
Merle Black, an expert on the region’s politics at Emory University in Atlanta, said the Republican Party went too far in appealing to the South, alienating voters elsewhere.
“They’ve maxed out on the South,” he said, which has “limited their appeal in the rest of the country.”
I think that NY Times article is wishful thinking. I’m not saying the Republicans don’t have to get their house in order, but the exit polling showed that 6 out of 10 listed the economy as their number one concern. Rightly or wrongly, the latter in my opinion, people blame the president and his party for bad economic times. In 4 years, if the economy is still gloomy, Obama will be a one and done president.
If Obama wants a second term, he’d be wise to cut taxes, and hold off on the spending. Once the economy has turned and he’s close to gaining a 2nd term, then I’d turn toward health care, etc. However, it doesn’t look like they’ll do the smart thing and open up with higher taxes and big spending.
Hey, something we agree about! If these are the good people they can’t keep without bonuses, fine, let ‘em go find something else.
LL. We like having you stop by and give opinions,whether agreeing or not. The name calling is really off putting though. That is the only part I find disagreeable, well inappropriate language doesn’t help since there are other ways to express oneself.