Results for ‘Wall Street’:

3 TOTAL POSTS

December 11th at 11:58AM

Poll: No Bonuses for Wall Street, But Sacks of Cash Still Pretty Cool

POSTED BY: Mary Phillips-Sandy

Thanks to the hard-working elves at Treasury, you and I now own equity stakes in 88 shaky financial institutions. Yay! Even better than a pony! And as we've discussed before, the government bailout has made some people reconsider executive compensation, particularly for those executives who %*&!ed everything up.

Bloomberg's new poll of American taxpayers chimes in...

In the poll, 76 percent say banks that have received government cash should cancel year-end bonuses to employees this year. About half of those say all Wall Street firms, regardless of whether they participated in the Treasury's Troubled Asset Relief Program, should cancel bonuses.

Still, a majority in the survey opposes a proposal by some lawmakers to cap at $400,000 the annual executive pay at companies that took taxpayer money.

Wall Street's five biggest firms paid a record $39 billion in bonuses for 2007, a year when three of the companies suffered the worst quarterly losses in their history and shareholders lost more than $80 billion. The average bonus was $211,849.

And if we're already taking that much money out of financial executives' pockets, we wouldn't want to cap their pay at a measly $400,000. That would just be harsh.

Especially since there's a financial crisis going on.

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LAST COMMENT:

These executives defend their bonuses, citing "retention". So what if these pricks walk? Let 'em. Fuck 'em. They screwed it all up in the first place. Do we really want them stick around? And aren't there a whole shit-pile of out-of-work executives and brokers just wandering the streets of Manhattan and mumbling to themselves, right now? Hire them at minimum wage to replace the criminals, and tell them they get a 20% tip if the coffee comes hot in a clean cup.

by DaveW December 12th at 10:27AM
5 Comments
December 1st at 1:52PM

That Recession That Isn't Going to Happen Is Happening

POSTED BY: Dennis DiClaudio

Hey, remember that supposed "recession" that was supposedly going to happen that all you whiners were whining all about for the past year or so.

Well, it turns out that all economic experts were right. There's nothing at all to worry about. A recession is not going to happen. No way! Because the recession already started, like, a year ago or something...

The evidence of a downturn has been widespread for months: slower production, stagnant wages and hundreds of thousands of lost jobs. But the nonpartisan National Bureau of Economic Research, charged with making the call for the history books, waited until now to weigh in.

In a statement released Monday, the members of the group's Business Cycle Dating Committee -- made up of seven prominent economists, most from the academic sector -- said that the economy entered a recession in December 2007.

See? Don't you feel silly now?

I can't wait to collect on all the bets I made as soon as everyone I know gets some jobs.

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