Pigs at the Trough: Wall Street Takes a Bonus Anyway

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Wall Street Pigs at the Trough

Wall Street Pigs at the Trough

In late December, ex-CEO John Thain snuck in $15 billion worth of Merrill Lynch bonus payments to executives and employees a month earlier than usual.  He did this while his merger partner to-be Bank of America was in Washington telling officials that a $20 billion rescue package was essential for survival.

The fact that anyone at Merrill Lynch, a firm that lost roughly $65 billion of it’s own and it’s shareholder’s money since 2008, even utters the word bonus is, in and of itself, appalling.  Are you complete sociopaths or do you simply not know what the word bonus even means?

Noun

bonus (plural bonuses)

  1. Something extra that is good
  2. An extra sum given as a premium, e.g. to an employee

Here’s the deal, vampires, bonus is from the Latin, meaning good.  What good have you done lately that you believe you are deserving of any kind of bonus?  Are you kidding?  Are we all just being “Punk’d“?  Is Ashton Kutcher about to pop out of The Federal Reserve building with a camera crew?

And before someone tries to argue that the bonus is a part of people’s pay that they rely on, I’ll just say too bad.  All of these bonuses over the past 5 years were paid based on the obscene leverage being used to artificially inflate profits at the Wall Street circus anyway.  The vast sums paid to executives and employees from all that leverage was undeserved then, so I sure hope they saved some of it for now.

While the swines drove up the price of everything from martinis to Manhattan apartments , no one stopped to ask how everyone else felt about it.  Well, the rest of us don’t really care about what perks and bonuses they were relying on.

As one of my clients, far-removed from The Street, remarked to me just yesterday:

“We all went along with the program and did what the government told us.  We put our money in 401k’s, even factory workers did.  Many of these people can never work long enough to replace what’s been lost over the last year.”

I read recently that over $2 trillion in 401k retirement savings has disappeared this year.  The fact that TARP money isn’t being used to work it’s way into the economy for the benefit of regular Americans who’ve been decimated is a disgrace.  To learn that it’s being distributed to the very bankers and traders that got us into this mess as a bonus?  Well, now we may be talking about the biggest crime ever committed, making Bernie Madoff look like a two-bit pool hustler.

Wall Street is and has always been filled with some of the hardest working and smartest people the world has to offer, so it’s unfortunate that for some, there was never enough money and the concept of risk aversion was tossed by the wayside.  The few ruined the market and the economy for the many.

So take your bonus, pig.  But know that the best revenge for a Type-A personality like yourself is coming soon:  The realization that you have peaked.  You will never be able to make that much money, with that little responsibility, ever again.

See Also:

Zombie Bank Showdown in the Met Life Building

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  1. Bill Singer commented on Jan 27

    Joshua:

    Looks like we have a mutual admiration society! Keep up the good work here.

    As to the issue of “bonuses” on Wall Street, I think you got it right and that you and I both are making an important point here. I fully support bonuses. As the poster who criticized you fairly notes, they are valid and serve an important goal of injecting fairer compensation into the system. That aside, there has to be some understanding that what a privately held company may allocate for its bonus pool is far different than what a publicly traded company may do. Clearly the Merrill and BOA shareholders here are the ones actually footing Thain’s bonus payments to his troops. Given the lousy market, the crash in the stocks’ prices, and the wholly inappropriate nature of the size/timing of those payments, you just have to wonder whether some folks get it.

    Ultimately, as your critic suggests, Thain had the right to make those bonus allocations. However, as I too often must explain to my law firm clients: There is a difference between having the right to do something and doing the right thing. Those payments were not the right thing for these times.

    Looking forward to exchanging thoughts with you in the future.

    Bill

  2. Bill Singer commented on Jan 27

    Joshua:

    Looks like we have a mutual admiration society! Keep up the good work here.

    As to the issue of “bonuses” on Wall Street, I think you got it right and that you and I both are making an important point here. I fully support bonuses. As the poster who criticized you fairly notes, they are valid and serve an important goal of injecting fairer compensation into the system. That aside, there has to be some understanding that what a privately held company may allocate for its bonus pool is far different than what a publicly traded company may do. Clearly the Merrill and BOA shareholders here are the ones actually footing Thain’s bonus payments to his troops. Given the lousy market, the crash in the stocks’ prices, and the wholly inappropriate nature of the size/timing of those payments, you just have to wonder whether some folks get it.

    Ultimately, as your critic suggests, Thain had the right to make those bonus allocations. However, as I too often must explain to my law firm clients: There is a difference between having the right to do something and doing the right thing. Those payments were not the right thing for these times.

    Looking forward to exchanging thoughts with you in the future.

    Bill

  3. Bill Singer commented on Jan 27

    Joshua:

    Looks like we have a mutual admiration society! Keep up the good work here.

    As to the issue of “bonuses” on Wall Street, I think you got it right and that you and I both are making an important point here. I fully support bonuses. As the poster who criticized you fairly notes, they are valid and serve an important goal of injecting fairer compensation into the system. That aside, there has to be some understanding that what a privately held company may allocate for its bonus pool is far different than what a publicly traded company may do. Clearly the Merrill and BOA shareholders here are the ones actually footing Thain’s bonus payments to his troops. Given the lousy market, the crash in the stocks’ prices, and the wholly inappropriate nature of the size/timing of those payments, you just have to wonder whether some folks get it.

    Ultimately, as your critic suggests, Thain had the right to make those bonus allocations. However, as I too often must explain to my law firm clients: There is a difference between having the right to do something and doing the right thing. Those payments were not the right thing for these times.

    Looking forward to exchanging thoughts with you in the future.

    Bill

  4. larry commented on Jan 27

    As a humble, small manufacturer of semi neccessary footcare products, allow me to weigh in. We who actually produce tangible products and need to keep our factories open and salaries paid are in awe of the concept of the worse you perform the more you get to gloam. If I knew this 40 years ago, I would have taken hubris and balls in school rather then English and math. Why does it take all you smart guys so long to tell the emperor he’s got a lousy wardrobe. I wish I could say better late than never. I think you write a hell of a column, Mr. Brown, keep it up.

  5. larry commented on Jan 27

    As a humble, small manufacturer of semi neccessary footcare products, allow me to weigh in. We who actually produce tangible products and need to keep our factories open and salaries paid are in awe of the concept of the worse you perform the more you get to gloam. If I knew this 40 years ago, I would have taken hubris and balls in school rather then English and math. Why does it take all you smart guys so long to tell the emperor he’s got a lousy wardrobe. I wish I could say better late than never. I think you write a hell of a column, Mr. Brown, keep it up.

  6. larry commented on Jan 27

    As a humble, small manufacturer of semi neccessary footcare products, allow me to weigh in. We who actually produce tangible products and need to keep our factories open and salaries paid are in awe of the concept of the worse you perform the more you get to gloam. If I knew this 40 years ago, I would have taken hubris and balls in school rather then English and math. Why does it take all you smart guys so long to tell the emperor he’s got a lousy wardrobe. I wish I could say better late than never. I think you write a hell of a column, Mr. Brown, keep it up.

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