Word: moneyitis
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...Blame? While it feels great to be outraged by these fat bonuses and whack the pigs by restricting - or seeming to restrict - the pay at outfits that have taken government bailout money, it's a bit pointless too. Because to some extent, Wall Street's pay and its problems really are misunderstood. (Stop snickering! It's true.) Even though "Wall Street" means the nation's big financial and investing operations, not a geographical location, a disproportionate number of Street people live in Manhattan. Things in the desirable parts of that borough are expensive beyond belief, especially if you have children...
...million or $30 million bonus to a Goldman Sachs or JPMorgan Chase or Morgan Stanley higher-up this year is obscene because none of these firms would exist if our government and others hadn't stepped in to save the world financial system. If these companies have all that money around, largely courtesy of us, they ought to send it to the U.S. Treasury. But paying a $250,000 bonus on top of a $150,000 salary to a worker bee is a different story...
...different story at intelligently run companies like Goldman. They make money by understanding risk and managing it. If the firm as a whole doesn't make money, the traders and risk takers don't either...
...stock-loan department, AIG's other disaster, took the cash it got for lending out stock owned by AIG and invested the money in esoteric securities rather than in risk-free Treasuries, the standard practice. The idea was - I'm not kidding - to make an extra one-fifth of 1% in interest. When the esoterica, which the stock-loan folks thought was riskless, crumbled, so did the firm. (See the worst business deals...
...Real Bailout Some bankers now have the attitude of, What's the problem? The crisis is over. Get out of our way and let us get back to business. This is especially true of those who don't owe the government any money. The conventional thinking is that the $700 billion of Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) money was the beginning and will be the end of the bailout. TARP lent $238 billion to more than 680 banks, according to SNL Financial, a research firm; 44 of these banks have repaid a total of $71 billion. Thus, there's less...