Wait, it Turns Out Rich People Are Selfish, After All
- Posted by: Morgan Clendaniel
- on February 16, 2009 at 3:47 pm
As a U.S. taxpayer, you now own a small share in many of our august and venerable financial institutions, because they were run so poorly that only the government was willing to buy stock in them to keep them afloat.
Luckily for you and your investment, most of the people who ran the companies that poorly are still running them. So, you should be unsurprised, but quite chagrined to learn that Citi and Morgan Stanley are going to take $3 billion (that’s right, billion) dollars to give their brokers “retention awards”—the new, politically correct term for “bonuses”—in order to keep said brokers from fleeing the sinking ships that are these companies.
Just to remind you, some of that is your money. Are you happy with what is being done with it?
Meanwhile, in England, conservative (that’s right, conservative) leader David Cameron has just proposed a cap on bonuses for all bankers who work for banks that the government has taken large stakes in. It must be something to the order of $500,000, like the CEO salary cap proposed by some U.S. Senators, right? No. It’s $2,835 (£2,000). I imagine a lot of brokers are going to be asking to transfer to the American offices in the next few days.
