Who gives a shit about the 'stockholders", the banks certainly don't. They continue to funnel cash right out the door each Christmas. The stockholders are just a bunch of chumps running pension funds who don't know their asshole from their elbow. I realize that I'm arguing with some kid who has probably just bought into alot of the "mystique", hence why you suffer from so many delusions. MF Global is just the beginning of the unwind. I wouldn't worry as much about HOW you profit, just if you get what you have left out in time. Gonna get real ugly.
denner, i think there are some here who are hired simply to talk trash just to disrupt when people state the truth, wouldn't name names but its quite easy to notice who this posters are after a while, my impression is their common trait is "no logic" as underlying retort
My initial response in this thread was to clearly make a distinction about the type of rhetoric we continue to hear about "taxing the rich". I've also made many attempts to distinguish between REAL risk takers and those who are quasi-risk takers (i.e. TBTF). I think that it's quite telling that I was immediately met with "logic man's" defensiveness as if I'd insulted his mother. As most people know, I've never once supported any of the so-called "liberal" positions and I've openly criticised much of the hypocrisy on the right. Hell, much of what I intoned are some of the very talking points of Ron Paul. He's constantly attacking the Fed and their corrupt influence on "setting the cost of money". This isn't a "left vs right" thing, it's about fixing a broken system.
I may understand more than you think. I have no faith in mankind...That is one risk I understand ... They got too greedy and now we crash and the society does some soul searching...but the alternative is worse... I need fear & greed, supply & demand, the rich & the poor...this is what gives me hope. ES
Either they're paid shills or dumber than dirt, since the point of the article wasn't that, say, Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg aren't entitled to their wealth. Or smart traders like Soros or investors like Buffett. But CEOs and Wall Street bankers who are merely lucky and who talk like they're supposed to be in the same league with these guys when they never earned that right? No. In non-Anglo Saxon countries, CEOs don't get what they do here: the person is, after all, still an employee, so unless they are the founder and the one responsible for making the company the success that it became, they shouldn't be paid as if they were a founder, which is what happens in this country. One article, comparing the pay of bank CEOs. It ends with this: And as I always point out, Adam Smith was all for the rich paying more than the poor in taxes. Anyone who's actually read The Wealth of Nations would realize his views were far closer to Buffett's than to the crap you see posted around here. And I don't know how Jobs felt, but Carnegie lobbied, for instance, for the estate tax when he was alive, and we know how Buffett and Gates both feel about it. Just my impression, but the truly successful who made it on their own are far likelier to be for a little giving back than the merely lucky overpaid employees are.
Yeah, the point of the article. I know it's common to hijack a thread, but Christ....anyway, thanks for staying on point.
I realize I'm arguing with a kid who thinks he's "looked behind the curtain" to see that the wizard is just a man because he's read a couple of Ron Paul articles about the Fed. If you're so much smarter than the people who run pension funds, why don't you go run one yourself? With your super-awesome intelligence, you ought to be able to beat every pension benchmark there is. Why are you wasting your time complaining when you could be out there earning? You do realize that bonuses are going to be down anywhere from 20 to 30% this year, right? I don't know of many kleptocrats who would stand for that. You also realize that the total dollar amount of Wall Street bonuses, compared to the overall economy, is a drop in the bucket that would amount to less than $100 for every man, woman and child who lived in the US but wasn't part of Wall Street. I won't apologize for not wanting to humor you in your obtuse theory about "real risk-takers" to get back $100 while destroying the capital markets. I don't think you have a slightest clue how compensation works in a corporation. At least your post doesn't exhibit any. You think people making millions of dollars just happened into that pay package? You have to underpay at the lower ends of the pay scale and overpay at the upper ends in order to give people the incentive to move up, which benefits the corporation by having the most dedicated people moving up the ranks and pushing the less-dedicated out. The only one of us who is deluded is you. The only thing missing from your post was an admonition to stock up on canned goods and guns. Shouldn't you be heading back to Zero Hedge about now?
Who's being "paid as if they were a founder" on Wall Street? Are there any Wall Street CEOs who get paid even anything as high as 5% of revenue? I highly doubt it. Lloyd Blankfein got paid $13.2 million in 2010, according to the NYT, and GS revenue was $39.2 billion, according to Yahoo Finance. Hardly "founder" levels of pay, relative to revenue. Sorry that you guys see big numbers like $13.2 million and can't fathom them or put them in context. http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/01/28/blankfein-gets-13-2-million-for-2010/ I'm not saying these guys are Nietzschean supermen, but they don't have to be, they only have to be better than the competition for their jobs (including you), which they clearly are. If you don't think all these guys have guys just below them who'd gladly undermine them and force them out so they could become CEOs, you're nuts. If you don't think that the Boards aren't open to the idea of forcing out whoever is the current CEO and replacing them with anyone who could make the company $1 more, you're nuts. That's why average CEO tenure has been declining while compensation has been rising. I doubt a single one of you could hold your own in a debate with any of the people you call "merely lucky". It's all so easy to pontificate when you don't have any actual skin in the game. I've participated in strategy setting and risk management for large corporations and, despite what you think, there are never any easy answers and the idea that someone at the C-suite level in any of these companies is just some bumpkin who failed upward is moronic.
The point of introducing Ron Paul into the conversation was to counter-balance all of your "right vs left" talking points. The concept of the Federal Reserve, US Treasury, investment bank "kleptocracy" is not some outlandish, fringe opinion. For many of the reasons I listed above, there is more than enough evidence that these institutions continue to benefit from a TBTF status and consolidate their power at the expense of everyone else If you're so much smarter than the people who run pension funds, why don't you go run one yourself? With your super-awesome intelligence, you ought to be able to beat every pension benchmark there is. Why are you wasting your time complaining when you could be out there earning? This is your typical retort, you've used it repeatedly and out of context. You cite the loss in shareholder value of banking stocks. I merely replied that it's always the clumsiest investors who are left holding the bag of stocks that have no real value. The shares can be diluted to the nth degree but there's always some entity willing to hold them till the very end. Furthermore, with the Fed holding rates at zero "for years at a time", they've essentially put a gun to everyone's head to put the "risk on" trade to work. No matter the fall out (and there always is to this type of central planning), we'll have another period of capital destruction. You do realize that bonuses are going to be down anywhere from 20 to 30% this year, right? I don't know of many kleptocrats who would stand for that. You also realize that the total dollar amount of Wall Street bonuses, compared to the overall economy, is a drop in the bucket that would amount to less than $100 for every man, woman and child who lived in the US but wasn't part of Wall Street. I won't apologize for not wanting to humor you in your obtuse theory about "real risk-takers" to get back $100 while destroying the capital markets. And you do realize that without MTM fantasy accounting, bonusses would not even be a topic of debate. It's no coincidence that the day this policy was instituted the market ripped higher and never looked back. I don't think you have a slightest clue how compensation works in a corporation. At least your post doesn't exhibit any. You think people making millions of dollars just happened into that pay package? You have to underpay at the lower ends of the pay scale and overpay at the upper ends in order to give people the incentive to move up, which benefits the corporation by having the most dedicated people moving up the ranks and pushing the less-dedicated out. This isn't even a part of the discussion, you're simply trying to change the direction of this discussion. It's immaterial "how compensation" works if the institution itself is being subsidized in any way, shape or form. The only one of us who is deluded is you. The only thing missing from your post was an admonition to stock up on canned goods and guns. Lame Shouldn't you be heading back to Zero Hedge about now? I should. It's a far more interesting cast of characters