Comments on: We’re in the dark about Wall Street pay

By: DrRajT

DrRajT — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 03:33:53 +0000

Strych09, do you have a reference for the $10,000pm? Thanks

By: Danny_Black

Danny_Black — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 07:31:06 +0000

Foppe, take the example of the UK. The issue there was not investment banking rather boring commercial banking. Fred Goodwin didn’t buy ABN at the top of the market to get a bigger cash bonus rather he did it to enhance the value of his shares – aka long term incentives. As usual with your claims the very opposite is true.

mfw13, ask Time Warner how productive M&A is. Ask the underwriters of BP in 1987 how little hidden risk there is in equity underwriting. Asset Managers were the people who DROVE the growth in Asset backed securities, driven by their clients – ie you – to get the maximum amount of short-term gain for the minimum amount of risk – as defined by the regulator – they are the reason ALL of the subprime happened. How do you market make without some trading for your own account? Also Glass Steagall separated commercial banking – the people who lend money to dodgy third world countries, make LBO loans, S&Ls, make dodgy suprime loans and at best rip off customers – from the securities business such as M&A, underwriting and

Prop trading at investment banks had absolutely nothing to do with the last crisis. All of it was the “low risk” stuff mentioned here.

By: mfw13

mfw13 — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 03:52:14 +0000

I think that the problem isn’t just the size of these people’s pay, it’s also the fact that they are getting paid so much for performing work that is perceived to have no public value.

Retail banking, M & A, market making, asset management…these are all activities that are useful and necessary in a market-based economy.

Trading for one’s own account, however, provides no value whatsoever to anyone other than shareholders, which is why many people, myself included, think that it should be split off from other banking functions, much like it was under Glass-Steagel.

By: Mike.Gayner

Mike.Gayner — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 19:07:49 +0000

Here in New Zealand company annual reports detail the number of employees under each income earning bracket ($50,000 – $100,000, $100,001 – $150,000 etc). Are companies over there not required to report on this?

By: Foppe

Foppe — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 18:34:21 +0000

You’re missing forest for trees. One of the problems is excessive pay for looting (and subsidized banking); the other is that bonus structure by itself creates problems, via bad incentives. Third, the notion that people would need to be rewarded with bonuses varying between hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars a year for wealth extraction and trade skimming via those supercomputers (oh, pardon me, “performing useful functions”) is ridiculous. Ever read Mark Ames’s Going Postal?

By: Strych09

Strych09 — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 17:56:06 +0000

And after Joseph Cassano ran AIG into the ground, the federal government hired him back as a contractor at the rate of $10,000 per month (!) to assist AIG’s new management in unwinding his credit default swap and other derivative trades.