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I think when people talk about wall street bonuses, they forget all the “little people”; the admin assistants, tech people accountants, etc who don’t make big salaries. Their bonus are also based on performance. While they are not bringing in big accounts these folks are working just as hard to reduce cost and increase profits.
“If the TARP recipients that year paid back the money borrowed and paid taxes on the bonuses laid out, I have to say no harm no fowl at this point. As I stated, this is a Capitalist system. Why would we pour sand in our engine?”
if someone gave me a shit ton of money back when the market was that volatile i could have made a ton of money as well.
if we were truly capitalist we would have let the global economy collapse, and the majority of the brownstoner republicans would have less value in society than a barista at Gorilla Coffee
Legion, that is why I think in the long run we would have been better off (in the very long run) letting many of the financial institutions fail.
“Worthless shit” to me refers to derivatives etc., not regular money management.
“Or brought in a huge investment banking client.”
Haaaa! True
Legion – top execs may not have taken bonus in 2008 but others still took.
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/03/wall-street-bonuses200903?currentPage=2
“We are not a Socialist/Communist society where
the government is largely charged with redistributing wealth.”***
***except tarp
jb and dh,
My gut feeling is that the government should have let those “too big to fail” actually fail.
My reading on this issue however, does point to a disasterous meltdown of our society if that did happen.
I don’t know enough about the inside details to know if this is true, but both Bush and Obama felt a meltdown of our society/banking system was imminent at that time so they did what they had to.
We did avoid a meltdown at that point.
If the TARP recipients that year paid back the money borrowed and paid taxes on the bonuses laid out, I have to say no harm no fowl at this point. As I stated, this is a Capitalist system. Why would we pour sand in our engine?
On the Union issue in the news today, this is question of where our society stands. I already pointed out that this is the nature of our economy. When states are broke, it is not the business of the system to redistribute but to cut spending and create business and jobs.
Can I jump in?
The derivative craze and mortgage crisis led to the recession, which was the bankers’ fault. The financial industry used to manage money, a worthy and necessary goal. Now they devise complicated algorithms to wring money fromplaces that didn’t exist except in an econ class grad seminar a decade ago.
Teachers and police and firefighters educate and protect millions of people a year. They are the real big producers. Do they not deserve hefty bonuses?
BSM, more interesting question is why are we harder on athlete salaries than the even bigger ones actors/actresses and musician make?
I used Jeter as the example, becaused he was discussed earlier. I add to the list, actors and musicians as well.
“dh thinks everyone at these places were just “trading worthless shit.”
My guess is that his point was more social commentary about the state of advanced capitalist societies.