What a complete moron you are. You're always on the uninformed side of an issue, to include this one. Perhaps someone needs to explain to you how investment banks pay. They pay through the combination of salary and bonus. Small salaries, in order to keep overhead down. They pay bonuses when the employee generates sufficient income to warrant one. When they don't generate sufficient income they don't get the bonus. Take the guy from AIG who got a million dollar bonus. You and all your shoe clerk friends were outraged. Yet this guy was on a salary of $1 per year. His entire pay was bonus. Did it every occur to you that some employees could earn bonuses, and yet a company could lose money for entirely unrelated issues? That said, keep this bullshit up, and you, the dumbass congressmen, and the shoe clerks will successfully drive all the productive earners out of the company, thus leaving your "investment" in the company exposed to complete loss. Maybe what we should do is vote everytime the company wants to do anything eh? Let's make sure that every thing they do is popular with the uninformed public like yourself. OldTrader
It seems to me that the press is doing a really poor ass job here. They write sensationalist articles instead of doing an objective coverage of the situation. For most people $180k salary is unimaginable and it's no surprise to me that reading about BAC increasing this to $300k to cover the bonuses will make everyone angry.
OldTrader, you don't even rate a response. You still believe Cramer made a semantical, hair-splitting distinction between Bear Stearns deposits and their market position when he told a random caller 'Bear Stears is fine,' days before they failed. You're probably the most naive asshole here. As to the rest of you defending Bank of American, a disaster in motion, run by people making corporate level and individual level apocalyptic decisions for the last, oh I don't know....6 years or so...let BofA give the TARP money back and deny them TALF money. Suuure. The incredible geniuses that work there will walk away and go elsewhere assuming they can find another job in today's climate. Good. I say let them. At this point, it's be better for the government to simply shore up deposits, shut these black holes like Citi and BofA down, as the government is spending about 100x propping these banks up opposed to what it would cost to just buy them through acquisition of their stock. The bankers really want to get into a game of chicken with the American Taxpayer? And their leverage would be what, exactly? That if they don't get their bonuses disguised as salaries they'll quit? HAHAHAHAAAAAA!!!!!!!!! That's some funny ass shit right there!!!!
Yea why would a millionaire trader with four decades experience rate a response from some like you who doesn't even trade. You are so idiotic it's a joke. How do you figure that "the government is spending about 100x propping these banks up opposed to what it would cost to just buy them through acquisition of their stock."? Do you not know that those share prices include liabilities[/i[? Of course you don't because you're a moron.
I'm probably roughly half your age, and have made more money in my primary line of business in the last 4 years than you have your entire career. Tell me when you sell hundreds of acres of land to big box retailers and can close those kinds of deals. What were you bragging about; making 2 million in your career trading? WTF is that? And you managed to raise a whopping 9 grand in your run for Congress? Blow it out your ass, Kurt. Go write some more articles and brag about your lifetime earnings on Yahoo finance. And then move to some backwoods area in the country and run for village council on the David Duke ticket. Maybe you garner more than 3% of the vote there. Dipshit.
the reason it is not explained is simple,the us treasury sells bonds to foreigners,it in turn takes the money and lends it to the banks,they lend it to the corporations,they hire the U.S. worker with some of it ,he buys american and produces the majority of the US GDP, and our country keeps on hummin,now if unc sam would stop lending to the banks,and they stop lending to the US,we stop hummin and the foriegners quit buying our bonds,now not only are we out of business,they could break us by cashing in on the bonds they have outstanding,basically calling in all their loans to the US,then we're ashes to ashes,dust to dust, and being such a large percentage of spokes in the big world wheel that turns and produces money globally,the whole global wheel will come to a halt,a depression,so they are doing all they can to keep the wheels turning . Would you walk into a bank and tell them you were 50 million in debt with no assets and try to get a loan by telling them that you want to borrow 5 million and i'll pay you back 2 million over the next 10 years if i dont go broke first,they wouldnt give you the loan,we are lucky they are still able to sell any bonds, these are the simpler reasons nothing is explained ,everything is done behind closed doors.
It will be funny to look at these posts in a year or two and see how unnecessarily upset many of you were regarding this topic. BAC/MER, MS, GS and others will have no trouble paying it back within the next 24-36 months. C and AIG will have large government stakes for years to come, but the govt will exit through a combination of secondary offerings, sales of businesses or mergers. .... Regarding the topic of compensation that is deemed to be "too high" by your average man-on-the-street. Investment banks did indeed let salaries outpace growth in the business. It was fed more by leverage than by performance for the last several years. This is hard to dispute. Further fuel to the fire was a raging bull market and competing bids for experienced human capital from other investment banks. HOWEVER, if you believe in efficient markets, don't you think that an investment bank that competes on price would have emerged by now if there truly was a market for one? A bank that pays its senior staff $100k and therefore has the ability to charge low commissions and advisory fees? From the clients' perspective: If you were on the board of Coca Cola and had a complicated multi-billion dollar deal that you needed help with, would you hire the low cost firm to save $1 million? Would your shareholders be comfortable that they got the best advice on the transaction or would they be waiting in the wings with a lawsuit when something goes awry?
If you believe in efficient markets, a government bailout of Bank of America or Citibank, AIG or any other institution would be deemed heresy. Any institution that dug a grave for itself in the past through poor risk management would have to fall on its sword and fail. Here's the kicker, though: I'd bet you dollar for dollar that for all the 'threats' of opting out of TARP and TALF, few of the banks that opted in could actually pay the money back to the taxpayers in the next year, let alone next month, if they had to. This is especially true of the megabanks. So, who's bullshitting who here? I think the chiefs at these institutions are full of hollow threats. As for these 'highly touted investment bankers,' who can go find a job elsewhere, let them. It would be better for them and the taxpayers if they found jobs with well managed, well capitalized institutions elsewhere, able to lend money, where their skills can be put to good use.
You are making an argument against the bail out - that's already happened, so not really a strong counter. What we're talking about here is compensating human capital in companies where those stakes have been placed...so they can continue making the most money possible for the shareholders. (And I can see your next argument coming...) That's just an uninformed comment on your part. How familiar are you with how these banks work and who makes the money within them?
You need to go back and review that thread, so that you have a clue as to Cramer said, and what I said about Cramer. What you did was make an emotional post, just as you have here, with little regard for the facts. That's your modus operandi. Are you female? Speaking for myself, I'm not "defending" BAC. My preference would have been not to bail them out at all. And certainly I think Ken Lewis is one of the bigger idiots on the planet. On the other hand, we did it, thanks to the very big government assholes that you yourself support. And now that that is done, I don't see the point of allowing politicians like Barney Frank to run banks, ruining them in the process. You do realize of course that anyone who has participated in TARP at this point wants out, and those that have applications are cancelling them. BAC specially has said they want to repay the money, and have the money to do so. In their infinite wisdom, the government has no process for repayment at this time. And frankly, I get the idea they don't want them to repay. More emotional bullshit. Take the guy from AIG....Jake DeSantis, Executive VP of AIG. Working for $1 per year plus bonus agreed to by contract. You might try reading the letter. He resigned. So AIG lost a highly qualified individual, who had nothing to do at all with the credit default swaps that have caused all the problems. The government proposes a tax illegal under the Constitution, to effectively strip him and other recipients of their bonuses, agreed to by contract. And morons like you are outraged at DeSantis, rather than these idiot politicians who allowed the situation to begin with. Either way, the guy is gone, and others will likely follow, none of whom were involved with credit default swaps. The taxpayer is worse for all of this, not better. OldTrader