daal plus 1 : pathie minus 12. most other comments here just show what a bunch of communist monkeys visit ET. talk like "employees of Wall Street firms have no ethics and are low lives" or "it is all fault of IBs" proves my point. get a grip girlie men. i wonder how many people here ever worked for investment bank and understand the distribution of work and money in these places. bonuses need to be given in one way or another because they are major part of total comp for the best. otherwise the best people will leave - simple as that. there is always demand for the best people - not sure you can say that about the used car salesmen...
I never heard of such excessive bonuses combined with 10% layoffs of workforce. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122472818682961421.html Bizarre...
not sure i follow you here. do you suggest that when you start to fire people you start with the best ones? maybe in countrywide but at goldmans i doubt it...
gimme a break. When you need to be downsizing to cut expenses, you cut unnecessary expenses and the 'best' employees have a sense of self sacrifice and are understanding enough to forego their raiding on corporate assets temporarily considering tough times. And don't tell me these aren't tough times. $13 of earnings estimate for this upcoming year seems like tough times for people that actually do not *create* anything. A goldman job is corporate welfare, an award for who you know and where you graduated from. The investment banking culture is prevalent with a sense of entitlement for fair rewards with unfair (to the risktakers) amounts of risk. They get the benefit of the corporate shield freeing themselves of liability from their levered risktaking, and yet get the same benefit of unchecked profit incentives without downside personal risk. If they are doing so well today (to justify these bonuses), they should exit from Warren Buffet's investment. No reason to pay so much for $$$ if you aren't destitute. The i-banking profit model is flawed from the beginning, is morally destitute even in capitalist models - it is a blatant structure to extract wealth without recourse from a system vulnerable to it. I say add the recourse and tie up their bonuses in stock that is clawback succeptible for 10 years from award date. Maybe it will keep the risktaking in check. Sign me up for the goldman job - it is a license to gamble (and profit) ridiculously without downside, even if systemic peril is the risk. Its sickening.
read my post fully... their reckless 'profit taking' is un earned. Do the earnings analysis. Why should a company earning $13/share next year (5.6B) allow their employees to take $14B in bonuses? As a shareholder, I'd be pissed. That should be distributed to the shareholder. Even their best year in history (2007) where they earned 9.6B, why the hell should they be distributing so much excess to employees? The common stock is nothing but recklessly pilfered. And I don't think Buffett would think this is good -- he's openly spoken out against this sort of thing in an idealistic sense.