Members of the Obama administration have taken turns deploring the billions of dollars in year-end bonuses the finance industry is getting ready to hand out. Never mentioned is what they think firms should do with the money. Give it back to their customers? Spend it on office decorations?
Firms can't just wish away revenue sitting on their books. That's an accounting crime. More to the point, aren't surging banker bonuses amid a general downturn the proximate and necessary outcome of Washington's recovery Heimlich, which involves doling out free money to banks and artificially goosing asset prices?
Er, wasn't this the plan?
3 comments:
I'll offer a somewhat different point of view: by and large, I think they deserve the bonuses. Before anyone goes crazy, I do not think the people who created and sold bullshit derivatives deserved to rewarded. I am talking about your run-of-the-mill Wall Street guy and his run-of-the-mill one million or ten million dollar bonus. Here's why.
Wall Street venture capitalists play a crucial role in our economy. Companies go to Wall Street to make their pitches for capital to start, expand, or turn around companies, thereby creating jobs and value for the country and the world. There are a few thousand people who decide who gets the money (more people than that are involved, but the final say-so rest in very few hands).
It is remarkable but true that much of the destiny of our capitalist system is determined by the decisions these guys make. Generally speaking, bad ideas don't get funded, and the ideas that do get funded are the ones that the guys with the money think will make them even more money and OBTW create jobs and value.
We want the smartest, most savvy people we can get in those positions. And they are worth every penny.
We, conservatives and liberals alike, don't want Barney, Nancy, or any czar of any description managing or regulating that process. It is the one part of free enterprise that needs to stay free.
Hags
And I have another take...
Freedom.
Its their money! Yes, there needs to be laws and regulation and all that crap but it is not my, your or the governments business how profits are distributed.
How quickly smart conservatives give up their Freedom is staggering.
Liberal...? they are just too dumb or into SM or something.
Only Barry and Rahn get to keep the money they have made.
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