Top Wall Street bankers to receive $70bn pay deals
 

thats fucking outrageous. bring whole finance to the mess and award themselves for it a big fat bonuses, while US taxpayer get huge tax hook. no wonder, when its managed by ex-Goldman Sachs CEO, with his stupid bailouts for his bank buddies. (yes, there were executed much better plans to solve bank crises in few countries in last 20 years )

sometimes even guys week before BK gave themselves bonuses. WTF were they thinking? I am not against big rewards, but I am against big rewards for terrible performace, that simply make no sense

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2...laries-banking
Financial workers at Wall Street's top banks are to receive pay deals worth more than $70bn (Ł40.4bn), a substantial proportion of which is expected to be paid in bonuses, for their work so far this year - despite plunging the global financial system into its worst crisis since the 1929 stock market crash, the Guardian has learned.

Staff at six banks including Goldman Sachs and Citigroup will pick up the payouts despite being the beneficiaries of a $700bn bail-out from the US government that has already prompted widespread criticism. The government cash has been poured in on the condition that excessive executive pay will be curbed.

Pay plans for bankers have been disclosed in recent corporate statements. Pressure on the US firms to review preparations for annual bonuses increased today when Germany's Deutsche Bank said many of its leading traders would join chief executive Josef Ackermann in waiving millions of euro in annual payouts.

The sums that continue to be spent by Wall Street firms on payroll, payoffs and - most controversially - bonuses appear to bear no relation to the heavy losses incurred by investors in the banks. Shares in Citigroup and Goldman Sachs have declined by more than 45% since the start of the year; Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley have fallen by more than 60%. JP MorganChase fell 6.4% and Lehman Brothers has collapsed.

At one point last week Morgan Stanley's $10.7bn pay pot for the year to date was greater than the entire stock market value of the business. In effect, staff, on receiving their remuneration, could club together and buy the bank.

In the first nine months of the year Citigroup, which employs thousands of staff in the UK, accrued $25.9bn for salaries and bonuses, an increase on the previous year of 4%. Earlier this week the bank accepted a $25bn investment by the US government as part of its bail-out plan.

At Goldman Sachs the figure was $11.4bn, Morgan Stanley $10.73bn, JP MorganChase $6.53bn and Merrill Lynch $11.7bn. At Merrill, which was on the point of going bust last month before being taken over by Bank of America, the amount accrued in the last quarter grew 76% to $3.49bn. At Morgan Stanley, the amount put aside for staff compensation also grew in the last quarter to the end of September by 3% to $3.7bn.

Days before it collapsed into bankruptcy protection a month ago Lehman Brothers revealed $6.12bn of staff pay plans in its corporate filings. These payouts, the bank insisted, were justified despite net revenue collapsing from $14.9bn to a net outgoing of $64m. None of the banks the Guardian contacted wished to comment on the record about their pay plans.

Behind the scenes, one source said: "For a normal person the salaries are very high and the bonuses seem even higher. But in this world you get a top bonus for top performance, a medium bonus for mediocre performance and a much smaller bonus if you don't do so well."

Many critics of the investment banking model have questioned why firms continues to siphon off billions of dollars of bank earnings into annual bonus pools rather than using the funds to shore up the capital position of the crisis-stricken institutions. One banking source said: "That's a fair enough question - and it may well be that by the end of the year the banks start review the situation."

Much of the anger about investment banking bonuses has focused on boardroom executives such as former Lehman boss Dick Fuld, who was paid $485m in salary, bonuses and options between 2000 and 2007. Last year Merrill Lynch chairman Stan O'Neal retired after announcing losses of $8bn, taking a final pay deal worth $161m. Citigroup boss Chuck Prince left last year with a $38m in bonuses, shares and options after multibillion-dollar write-downs.

In Britain, Bob Diamond, Barclays president, is one of the few investment bankers whose pay is made public. Last year he received a salary of Ł250,000, but his total pay, including bonuses, reached Ł36m.

One London-based banking source, who worked for a US bank, said many in the City were expecting star traders to see little reduction in their bonuses.

"The real 'rain-makers' will not notice an impact. It will be the more middle-ranking people who will be really hit."

I hate to say it, but the US taxpayers pretty much deserve this. Why? Simple, because every time the bankers want to fuck them, they just bend over and hand them the lube.

as another guy wrote:
"I will say it again..if I was in charge..I would force all these overpaid Wall Street bums to repay their bonuses over the past 5-10 years..repossess their Ferrari's/fancy houses and so on. Where is the outrage over Paulson's involvment with Goldman Sachs and his ridiculous salary..why does nobody in the media every bring this up."

The same guy who helped a lot to cause this finacial crise is now in charge to solve it:error:error

I 110% agree with you.

And they will continue to take it in the ass until the end of time, from anyone who wants to fuck them in the ass.

seeing how much rage this thread spread on GFY, I maybe agree with you, maybe the US taxpayer really deserve to be bend over like a sheep and get it hard in the ass once again.

Bieng a US taxpayer who is getting raped. Thanks for the comments.

I just got my election ballot. Vote for the rep who voted for this bailout or vote for a guy who is supposedly a crook and was sentenced to 10 years in prison but won on appeal, and got off. Great choices I have. So vaseline or Ky Jelly?

we know there is no good choice to choose right politician everywhere in the world too, but we as taxpayers should be either doing organized pressure or being able to present a better alternative.
I fear that due lack of pressure from us, Joe6Packs, the democracy is turning into oligarchy of most powerful people - it was always soo, but this trend is definately strenghtening.

.

Just because you *think* you can't do anything doesn't make it true. Not saying I'm happy for the situation that our American friends are finding themselves in, on the contrary. But where there's a will, there's a way.

Obama is ready to fuck every single one of them right in the anal cavity and they're already lining up to get some black cock in the ass. You're absolutely right, fags deserve to be fucked!

excellent article on this topic:


Wall Street Bonuses
Why The $700 Billion Landgrab By Wall Street Won't Work, And Other Miscellanea


America is Wall Street's bitch. It's official.

Not that anyone should be surprised.

Let's face it, the same lying cheats who created the financial swindle of the century, via now worthless CDO and CMO products, who took out hundreds of billions of dollars in profits directly attributable to the creation of these instruments (a large number of which are likely worthless, as they are backed by non-existent mortgages or the same mortgages re-used countless times), created a crisis of their own devising (by shorting those same CDOs into the ground, thereby reducing the value of the collateral value, thus creating single handedly the "credit crisis"), after lobbying hard in 2004 to eliminate rules that barred the industry from eliminating reality-based loan loss reserves and levering up to dangerous levels, have put the pork to the nation's taxpayers yet again.

Never mind that the bailout plan isn't working. Credit markets are still locked up, because the recipients of the bailout aren't doing what they are supposed to with the money - lending it out. No, instead, they are holding on to it, which is sort of the same as saying the plan never would have worked given the character of those involved. But what are they doing with all the taxpayer money they are holding onto?

See below from the UK's Guardian:
Wall Street banks in $70bn staff payout
Pay and bonus deals equivalent to 10% of US government bail-out package

* Morgan Stanley $10.7bn
* Goldman Sachs $11.4bn,
* Morgan Stanley $10.73bn,
* JP Morgan $6.53bn
* Merrill Lynch $11.7bn.

Financial workers at Wall Street's top banks are to receive pay deals worth more than $70bn (£40bn), a substantial proportion of which is expected to be paid in discretionary bonuses, for their work so far this year - despite plunging the global financial system into its worst crisis since the 1929 stock market crash, the Guardian has learned.

Staff at six banks including Goldman Sachs and Citigroup are in line to pick up the payouts despite being the beneficiaries of a $700bn bail-out from the US government that has already prompted criticism. The government's cash has been poured in on the condition that excessive executive pay would be curbed.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2...laries-banking

Yes, you are reading this right. You were told by the ex-head of Goldman that this wasn't a theft of billions by the Wall Street bankers, no, rather, that this was a necessary stimulus package required to free-up the frozen credit markets. We were treated to countless articles from NY types about how we were all going to die if the bill wasn't passed. Our elected officials overrode the express will of the people, and approved the bill, even as our liar president drove home the canard that this, like most of his other "it's an emergency, do it now!" edicts, needed to happen or the world would end. You know, cause financial weapons of mass destruction were about to be used by, well, some faceless enemy, unless we shelled out $700 billion. We even got to read about how this whole mess was really Main Street's fault, not Wall Street's, and how Main Street would lose unless the bankers got most of Main Street's remaining savings to lubricate the markets. Tisk tisk, the money needed to be approved IMMEDIATELY!!!!!

And now we, in a non-US paper, of course, discover what is actually going on. Our money goes, exactly as suspected, to the same Wall Street bankers who screwed us on the whole deal in the first place.

My disgust knows no bounds, even as I have zero surprise. It's just amusing to me how quickly they moved, and how brazen the grab is. Anyone who believed this wasn't what it appeared to be, the last theft by our administration's rich white friends, can now digest the above, as well as the articles describing how the banks aren't lending the money they just got for the express purpose of lending.