Wall Street Bonuses: Just Sickening or Truly Revolting?

The holidays have passed, but Christmas actually arrives in late January on Wall Street, when the brave men and women of American finance receive their enormous bonus checks. When confronted with a gigantic bag stuffed with American tax dollars, most people would probably find their mind turning to questions like "does that yacht come in blue?" or "is that the biggest Rolex you have?"— but not the lords of Wall Street. They've got a bigger problem: how to make these bonuses seem perfectly normal and not at all a major scandal to the American people.

The Times isn't sure whether the bonuses will just be really big or super giganormously absurd, but in any case they'll be a lot more than the rest of us ~~suckers~~ Americans will ever make in one year: "Goldman Sachs is expected to pay its employees an average of about $595,000 apiece for 2009, one of the most profitable years in its 141-year history. Workers in the investment bank of JPMorgan Chase stand to collect about $463,000 on average." The sheer bigness of these numbers has got some bankers worried that those nosy-busybodies from Washington might start asking uncomfortable questions, or maybe even clawing back some of their winnings through a special tax. Britain has put that kind of tax in place- raising more than $10 billion dollars this year.

And what's worse, some experts even have the temerity to ask if Wall Street has really learned anything from the tribulations of the last year: "There is nothing I’ve seen that gives me the slightest feeling that these people have learned anything from the crisis. They just don’t get it. They are off in a different world"— and that's coming from John Reed, one of the founders of Citigroup. And he's not the only one who's upset: some of the pesky bank shareholders have begun to ask whether finance industry is a heads-we-win-tails-you-lose kind of system.

But let's be honest: Wall Street has nothing to worry about. We'll be writing this exact same post twelve months from now— and there's not a damn thing any of us can do about it.

Contact the author of this article or email tips@gothamist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By Jake Dobkin in News on January 9, 2010 2:30 PM

Comments [rss]

Holsum Pan

I wish I worked at Goldman so I could be happy about this. I don't though, so fuck 'em.

valeriob

You, sir, have no grasp of how anything in the finance industry works.

I'm pretty sure your knowledge of money ends at those little machines you put a quarter in, twist, and get an awesome little sticky hand.

sidenote

Dude, calm down, I agree with you here - I've been arguing this whole time that we need financial reform and faster than we're getting it now. I'm just saying the bankers aren't the only ones to blame and instead of whining about banker bonuses we should be talking about why Congress hasn't done anything to fix the system.

Amanda Harletsch

OF THE SOCIAL DARWINSIM INSTIGATED BY REPUBLICANS:

"The purely selfish kinds of coercion are a form of predatory behavior by the coercing party, whose aim is to narrow down the scope of other people’s actions so as to make them instrumental to its own personal interests. According to many social philosophers, this sort of predatory behavior will become the prevailing one."

Interesting how this concept can be applied to bankers and child abusers, but yes, according to the right, we should blame anybody else but the abusers, what a logic!

Amanda Harletsch

Some experts say the profitability of credit cards really began twenty-five years ago, when the banking industry successfully eliminated a critical restriction: the limit on the interest rate a lender can charge a borrower. Deregulation, coupled with a revolution in technology that enables the almost real-time tracking of personal financial information and the emergence of nationwide banking, has facilitated the widening availability of credit cards across the economic spectrum. But for some, the cost of credit is often far greater than it appears.

According to Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren, the credit card companies are misleading consumers and making up their own rules. "These guys have figured out the best way to compete is to put a smiley face in your commercials, a low introductory rate, and hire a team of MBAs to lay traps in the fine print,"

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/video/flv/generic.html?s=frol02s4c0q7a&continuous=1

sidenote

Ok, but that article also says people basically don't pay attention to their own credit card rate, and only pay the minimums each month. I mean, what do they expect to happen? It's not rocket science to understand that is a dangerous practice.

Amanda Harletsch

It takes two parties to create a contract - A FAIR ONE-.

In this case abuses of power are being taken place, indeed thanks to the IGNORANCE of people.

Not for this you can think this contracts are the best this society can expect as a legal system. Perhaps that is the way you think capitalism works, only corrupting minds and law.

sidenote

Right - so why sign the contract if you think it is unfair? It's not like you have to get an awful credit card - there's lots of competition out there.

I agree with you that the system is broken, I agree we need to help protect people, but I also think there needs to be personal accountability. Don't expect me to cry for you if you don't read your own credit card contract, charge it to the hilt, only pay the minimums and then get into trouble.

Amanda Harletsch

Most of the people taking this type of contracts are not entering expecting they're going to be abused, and in legal terms this abuses are allowed.

So yes it takes more than awareness to understand and accept the abuse.

My problem is one of the parties enters the contract already planning abuse, and this is not understanding even itself as equal in the transaction. To accept this equation as a "given" in capitalistic terms, is just degrading the system as a hole in favor of a bunch of corrupt "experts".

It is really problematic to think the only way is to expect the "weak" part in the contract to be ready to fight, or just to don't take the money to begin with.

Changes ought to be made so predatory practices are stopped.

Amanda Harletsch

Of course it is all legal, that is way the spend millions in lobbyist and pay for most senators campaigns!

All legal, but is that morally acceptable?!

Should we accept the state of things as a permanent condition? How is that progress?

it is always about the money before doing the right thing

sidenote

In a capatalist society, yes! And to expect otherwise is simply naive. I don't laud the bankers for what they did or are doing, but I'm saying that we can't expect otherwise unless we regulate. What happened to government reform on financials anyway? If this is such a big deal, wtf is Obama waiting for?

Amanda Harletsch

so by not being "naive" we ought to lower our heads and get sacked by a bunch of assholes?

Naivete and IGNORANCE is what they take advantage of! Agreed. But don't expect me and many to just be quiet about how immoral these suits are, and PLUUUEASE! to dismount a whole legal system fostered by eight years of corrupt republican government takes more than one year of opposing the republican congress. Of course you can blame one individual while condoning the major players in that have planned maintained and controlled this situation for years , very convenient, and presumably you are not that naive, so i would say you are participant by condoning the ones truly responsible for this. Making Obama the sacrificial sucker for the god of money is the work of the worse of this society. Turning a blind eye on the evils of the republicans and the the powers of greed while blaming those that make efforts to change this situations, what a noble enterprise.

Law has two coercive forms: the reason for acting right and the fear of punishments... Bankers don't follow either but do twist the legislation process way. It is called the political power of the bank industry. Blocking legislation and REGULATION is the work of the greedy bastards in favor of themselves only.

sidenote

No, I would argue we should impose regulation to make sure we aren't taken advantage of by the banking industry. I think it would be naive to continue to do nothing and expect the bankers have learned their lesson and have been shamed into paying themselves less.

I'm not sure what your expectation is here - if you want to give Obama a pass on not pushing any financial reform more than a year after the Recession started that's fine, but how can you complain that nothing has changed among the bankers?

I'm upset that Obama hasn't made this more a priority because your reaction and opinions are exactly the kind of political and popular support he needs to push something through. Evey day we get further away from the bottom the more people forget, the less a priority it becomes, the less political will he has to get something done and the easier it is for the banking lobby to control the conversation.

Amanda Harletsch

one of the thousands of links you could find about this topic on how legal immorality is:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/credit/eight/

sidenote

Sorry, but what's the problem here? Pretty much every major bank except Citi has repaid TARP - not only that, but Uncle Sam made a profit on it in the form of about $1BB in dividends, not to mention the interest that was required!

Most people just don't get it - the bankers, like any industry, will go right up to the law to make money - all this horrible stuff that happened was all perfectly legal. These guys are in the business of making money - it is the government's responsibility to regulate and restrict their actions to prevent disasters like we had last year.

The profit is already made - it has to go somewhere, so why not the employees?

Amanda Harletsch

you are infinitely and dangerously complacent and care little for how abuses are being made thanks to corrupt individuals. The only group you are helping are the ones doing wrong and abusing power!

sidenote

HTML tag fail.

S.K.

Most of us don't get bonuses for performing good jobs, so why do the folks down on Wall Street?

Amanda Harletsch

An individual that devotes his life to make money without taking into account how you make that money or how many people you screw up, is not somebody I would call "smart" as much a a low life, a corrupt individual.

Gaining status getting a degree, years of education that conveniently ignores justice and ethics?! too convenient and too damn hypocritical. He have ourselves a cast of self assigned priests of the cult of money!

You can do "legal" activities that are against the development of the many, maintain the status quo in favor of the very few, and feel you are just doing your job or be aware of the consequences of the abuses of power.

What is truly disturbing is to find people that not only accept this but also insult themselves to justify abuses of others. Like the kind that say:"most of us posting here are either too stupid, too racist, and too lazy" to merely justify reality.

Choosing to be looser by picking moronic winners? Yeah that is the pinnacle of human potential for some...Most of these self proclaimed looser will vote for people like BUSH or even Cheney, the more abusive the closer to a leader they would say.

GREED is the name of the disease this society suffers. It is not intrinsic to human values, it is a systematic problem. You can feel it is all doomed, or instead take action by simply demanding more responsibility from these pieces of shit in blue shirts.

But yeah all this awareness is for some "socialism"

The kind that actually makes the USA look like a third world country: a country of useful idiots for the immoral power of the right.

S.K.

That an anonymous cubicle rat in a suit gets paid more than the person who put his hands into physically creating everything this person sees and uses, astounds me.

Why isn't the construction worker who built the tower, the security guard who keeps the banker safe, the cafeteria worker who feeds the banker, the babysitter who watches the banker's kid, get paid more? Were it not for them, the banker wouldn't have a job.