Friday, January 30, 2009

"You can't use taxpayer money to pay out $18-billion in bonuses... What planet are these people on?"

Thank you Senator McCaskill. Hey, I'm in sales. I like to make a good living and I like to get incentive compensation based on my results. I'm sure a lot of folks in finance and banking do too.

Let's just say that if those bonuses were earned, they were obviously based on the wrong metrics. I heard that last year had the 6th highest payouts in history. Can't convince me it was the 6th highest profitable year for that industry, so something is fucked up for sure. Perhaps the sales types did what they were told and produced. They should get paid. But the executives who set up those programs should be out on their asses rather than getting overrides and bonuses themselves as their firms drown because of their bad judgment.

These are public companies. Who are the directors? Who are the compensation committees? How do people make such bad judgments and then get millions. I just don't get it.

I love McCaskill's bill to cap executive salaries at taxpayer assisted firms at $400k, same as the President earns. These Wall Street types say they need to big payouts to attract the best talent. And that may have been true when profits were high and there were more jobs than people.

I'd like to see Wall Street and baseball, to name a couple, cap earnings at $400k. Prove to me you won't have talented players still wanting to work.

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