Posted on 10/16/2009 1:42:51 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
A celebrated Goldman Sachs partner, Gus Levy, coined the maxim that long defined the bank, the savviest and most influential firm on Wall Street: “Greedy, but long-term greedy.”
But these days that old dictum is being truncated to just “greedy” by some Goldman critics. While many ordinary Americans are still waiting for an economic recovery, Goldman and its employees are enjoying one of the richest periods in the bank’s 140-year history.
Goldman executives are perplexed by the resentment directed at their bank and contend the criticism is unjustified. But they find themselves in the uncomfortable position of defending Goldman’s blowout profits and the outsize paydays that are the hallmark of its success.
For Goldman employees, it is almost as if the financial crisis never happened. Only months after paying back billions of taxpayer dollars, Goldman Sachs is on pace to pay annual bonuses that will rival the record payouts that it made in 2007, at the height of the bubble. In the last nine months, the bank set aside about $16.7 billion for compensation — on track to pay each of its 31,700 employees close to $700,000 this year. Top producers are expecting multimillion-dollar paydays.
The latest tally came Thursday, when Goldman reported another set of robust results. But its strong financial showing — a profit of $3.19 billion in the third quarter — was overshadowed by Goldman’s swelling bonus pool. Goldman set aside nearly half of its revenue to reward its employees, a common practice on Wall Street, even in this post-bailout era.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
.. or are they just misunderstood and victims of a conspiracy to besmirch their fine names and all their valuable contributions to the financial world we live in today?
HUMMM, they got into bed with the snakes and now they are finding out that the snakes will bite who ever is closest.
I wonder how much the stockholders get. Their stock hasn’t exactly gone wild over this.
They’re on their own dime now. Companies that haven’t paid back TARP deserve heavy scrutiny, companies on their own dime it’s not our business. This class envy BS needs to stop, that’s how we get socialists like Obama in office.
To gain some face back, they may just donate more to charity.
Maybe some former shareholders will appreciate a free soup and bread line at the next corporate meeting.
Hey, there ought to be a way to invest in these folks... if you can’t lick them then join them....
I seeen you posting such earlier. LOL Opportunist You! ;-)
But are they getting some other kind of gummit favors.
Don’t know, doesn’t matter. They’re following the fairly typical Wall Street firm model of distributing around half their revenue to the employees, in what world is giving the employees half the revenue a bad thing?
class envy BS needs to stop
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so are you defending the free market and also supportive of a few institutions to hold such sway over the masses with oversight that is laughable at best, criminal at worst?
Btw, I don’t think we got O becuz of class envy. it was a lot uglier than that, imo
As the past events have shown when these trades go horribly wrong it's us who will bail out Goldman Sachs. How about GS should give back the billions of dollars they got from US taxpayers indirectly through the Feds meeting the couterparty obligations of AIG, etc.
The problem is GS might not explicitly have TARP money but they have benefited immensely from gov’t and Fed bail outs. Also, GS is not stupid they know their buddies in Washington will bail them out.
Those are really 3 separate issues.
There’s nothing wrong with a company paying half the revenue to the employees. EVER.
There’s probably something wrong with how much power GS gets to wield in our economy, but that’s not the employees’ fault and should bar them from getting just compensation.
There’s certainly something wrong with how the government regulates the stock market and fails to notice and punish fairly blatant market manipulation, but again not the employees’ fault and shouldn’t bar them from compensation.
We definitely got Obama because of class envy, and there is nothing in the world uglier than class envy. Class envy is the tool used to enslave the masses and exterminate dissenters. Class envy is the path to socialism and communism, class envy is the enemy of all life and freedom.
And again we’re playing in separate issues. Which of those is a reason their employees shouldn’t be paid from the profits of the company?
The bind it REALLY puts the American people in...are the implications of the reality that these guys are the government...and the Legislative and Executive branches of Federal gov’mt have been transformed into the “iron fist” and “jackboot” on their behalf.
My main concern is that it is a fairly small segment that benefits mightily with little to no recourse or transparency when it comes to its dealings with the gubamint and benefits it derives in those dealings. So muddied are the lines , imo, when folks say move along never mind, that makes me wonder all the more..
btw I am not an anti-capitalist, God bless the FRee market .. but don’t slap millions in the face and say they shouldn’t be envious .. isn’t that what drives others to succeed.. on a level playing field hopefully. we haven’t had one of them for years.
Which is a fine concern, but why is that a reason for these employees to not get paid? There are great reasons to be concerned with GS, but paying their employees half the revenue isn’t on the list.
an issue of Disproportionality perhaps.. big word..
We now deal in quantities of compensation these days that beg when is enough enough? and exactly how does one guage the worth of services delivered? I understand bonuses are part of contracts.. so legally, they are due whatever they can get.. the hitch is , Ideally it isn’t the ‘big dogs’ money to give out like so much candy or grog in the first place and they tend to get a bit carried away themselves. leaves a bad taste in folks mouth.
You can make that case for many CEO salaries. But this isn’t CEO salaries, this is taking half the revenue and dividing it up among all the employees proportional to their tie to the revenue stream. There’s nothing wrong with that. They aren’t giving the CEO a $40 million bonus and telling the janitor they can’t afford the $.20/hr raise he thought he was getting, this is going to everybody, and yeah the CEO is going to get more but the janitor isn’t looking like he’s winding up out in the cold.
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