Posted on 02/04/2009 8:34:52 PM PST by Free ThinkerNY
President Obama's Wall Street salary cap may be well intentioned and it certainly taps into public sentiment, but it's a killer for New York.
"Without the talent of Wall Street to bring us back into a position of leadership in the global economy, we're going to be in bad shape as a world economic power," said Kathryn Wilde of the Partnership for New York.
Wylde says the Obama salary cap will lead to a critical brain drain – China and the United Arab Emirates have already come to poach Wall Street talent. She also says lower salaries in the financial industry will mean dramatically lower tax revenues for the city and state.
"We also depend heavily on the financial services industry to fund our economy and our tax rolls," said Wylde. "Last year 20 percent of our income taxes in the states – 12 percent in New York City came from Wall Street."
(Excerpt) Read more at wcbstv.com ...
But with the greatest of respect, I don't really think U.S. world dominance is at stake here. These guys - the good ones, anyway - they don't work for salary.
I completely agree with the Madoff example. And I’m not saying everyone has clean hands by any means. All organizations have their ‘idiots’. Wall Street certainly has them.
I don’t think you drive off money and players like Obama is doubtless going to do. He isn’t going to stop at Wall Street either. Corporations, large businesses... one of Obama’s people today, perhaps it was Barney Frank I don’t recall right now, said this is only the beginning.
If Obama starts lopping off large salaries across the board, what does that do to our talent pool?
If people are working on spec, they aren’t going to be making huge sums of money under Obama. This guy may not believe in the War on Terrorism, but he definitely believes in the War on Capitalism.
This is Lenonist. We cannot ignore what the implications are. One the large salaries have been done away with, guess who is next. Remember, these are people who firmly believe that if you have an income at all, you are rich.
What would stop a CEO making over $500,000 from stepping down, keeping his vast income and promoting a less than $500,000 schlub to the CEO position? Obomba is just working another shellgame to make us all think he’s really being thoughtful about all that paper money he’s had printed which will saddle our kids and grandkids with debt they will never be able to repay.
You may be right. I’ll certainly give the matter some serious thought, anyway. Have a great evening.
That's exactly what will happen.
Democrats are far too shallow to think about consequences though. It's all about the symbolism.
You too. I appreciate the difference of opinion. Take care.
Yes....there is just too much sympathy for Wall Street Whiners.
The Wall Street Whiners...they would be like the 0-16 Detroit Lions asking for the Vince Lombardi Trophy
They sold their souls to the devil, and now it’s time to pay back the favor.
suckers!!!!!!!
The stock holders should decide how much their execs get paid. The only cap should be determined by the law of supply and demand and how much money it takes to attract the talent necessary to maximize the value of stocks to the stock holder. Anything else throws a hammer into the gears of capitalizm. These anti-capitalist Stalinist know the tactics of class envy like a fine instrument. It has provoked civil revolutions in earlier days: Velikaya Oktyabr’skaya sotsialisticheskaya revolyutsiya.
HOW ABOUT LIMITING LAWYERS SALARIES??
I know some with the welfare mentality can't cope..but look at it as tough love from the American taxpayer.
They need to realize they are part of the same society as other people.
They don’t plan on this only pertaining to the firms that got bailouts. They plan on expanding this to every corporation, bank, lending institution. This was addressed earlier today on another thread.
Look, if this mess truly festered and blew out on Wall Street without government interference, I would go along with your thoughts on this. That isn’t what took place though.
The government forced lending institutions to make millions of home loans to people who could not service those loans. The paper for those loans was bundled and handed off to other firms who used that paper as collateral to obtain still more loans. It was a house of cards.
Congress, the Presidency, and the Attorney General contributed to this situation. If these poor loans hadn’t been forced on the lending industry, we wouldn’t be in this mess today. The fixes have been geared toward keeping people who can’t make payments in homes that will go belly up in six months anyway. We’re going to do this all over. And I’m not even sure the demand that bad loans be made, has been stopped.
Janet Reno in 1994, took a credit institution to court. She charged them with not complying with the laws that required they extend loans to the poor. As part of the settlement, that firm agreed to start making loans. And they did. And all the other lending institutions had no choice but to fall in line doing the same thing.
This corrupted our entire credit system in the U.S. And this paper didn’t stay in the U.S. At least it’s ownership didn’t. Foreign credit concerns bought up the real estate loans bundled together. U.S. real estate had traditionally been a very stable investment with reasoned growth. And when the feds demanded these loans be extended, what were lending institutions to do but bundle up loans has they always had.
So when the market finally went south, the U.S. credit markets, European credit markets, they all went south at once. Middle Eastern investors were hurt too.
Where Wall Street incompetence is real and can be proven, you and I will stand together to blame the right people. But where our government has devised poor policy and caused a global melt-down, I am not going to look to Wall Street and blame them. I don’t think you would either under these circumstances.
Right now I'd suggest all this great “talent” run their companies so they don't need the government to bail them out and stop looking for boggy men.
Are you by any chance aware that Bank of America and a number of other banks were called to the White House for talks. During that meeting those banks got massive bail out funds, over their own objections.
The government forced them to take those funds.
These are some of the corporations the government wants to force into salary caps.
You need to quit thinking of this as the government finally reigning in the bad guys. The government is the bad guys here.
Sorry I cant take you seriously.
if they want to keep their fat salaries, then they can run their company without goverment funds.. i dont see the problem here
Cry you a river? I’ve got no vested interest in whether you believe me or not.
BofA may not have been one of the banks after all. There were a number of major banks on Wall Street involved.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/oct/15/wall-street-bank-shares
Although the treasury disclosed no figures, an industry source said the biggest investments of $25bn each will be in JP Morgan, Citigroup and Bank of America.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.