I am officially peeved.Bankers are not apologizing
So i read that President Obama openly criticises the paying of huge bonuses for bankers as so call incentive for them to stay in wallstreet firm. and then i get this article below one week later to see their atitude towards this and am truely disgusted.
It would seem that they are that disconnected with reality to still think its their fucking right that bonus be paid for their role in the good job of partially getting us into shit mess like this.
Yes bonus is part of the pay compensation and it is considered a paycut, but you still end up earning more than the average joe so where is the freaking hurt? To the pride? To the ferrari that you wanna buy since last month?
Spare some freaking thoughts to the misrepresented and mis-adviced people that are struggling to make ends meet or do not have a roof over their heads. Articles like this just makes me blow my top off.
It’s Theirs and They’re Not Apologizing
- Image via Wikipedia
By ALAN FEUER and KAREN ZRAICK
Getting between a broker and his bonus is like getting between a schnauzer and his lunch bowl. He may not bite you, but you are going to smell his breath.
“People come here because they want to work hard and get paid a lot for working hard,” one investment banker said Friday as he wended his way, lunch bag in hand, through the World Financial Center. “I think there’s a disconnect between Wall Street and Main Street.”
That certainly was the case this week when Main Street learned that, despite the craters of a down economy, Wall Street bonuses were more than $18 billion last year — roughly what they were in the fatty, solvent days of 2004. The media hollered, the president scolded, and ordinary people checked their wallets. But downtown, in the caverns of finance, the moneymakers shrugged and took it on the chin.
It is a complicated thing, they said, to apportion compensation in a bear market. First of all, profits do not stop; they often ebb. Second of all, losses move unequally, so the law of the jungle should still apply: you eat what you can kill.
“My bonus is ‘shameful’ — but I worked hard to get it,” said John Konstantinidis, a wholesale insurance broker, lunching Friday at Harry’s at Hanover Square.
“I’m a HENRY,” Mr. Konstantinidis added. “High Earner but Not Rich Yet.”
Nonetheless, it was rather remarkable on Friday how many white shirts denied getting a bonus altogether when they were asked. Indeed, if the data obtained by reporters in the district was any measure, there is no telling where that $18 billion really went.
What can be told, however, is that President Obama is substantially less popular on Wall Street this week than he was last week. Words like “outrageous,” “shameful” and “the height of irresponsibility” — especially when applied to a man’s paycheck — tend not to make you many friends.
“I think President Obama painted everyone with a broad stroke,” said Brian McCaffrey, 55, a Wall Street lawyer who was on his way to see a client. “The way we pay our taxes is bonuses. The only way that we’ll get any of our bailout money back is from taxes on bonuses. I think bonuses should be looked at on a case by case basis, or you turn into a socialist.”
That, indeed, was a recurring equation: Broad strokes + bonuses = socialist.
“It’s a very slippery slope to go down,” said another insurance broker as he waited to be seated for lunch at Cipriani Downtown. “A blanket statement like that borders on” — you guessed it — “socialism.”
There were, of course, those downtown who were disgusted by the thought of this year’s bonuses, though they were mainly wage earners like Ashton Johnson, 32, a courier who was chatting outside the Stock Exchange with a buddy wearing a sandwich board reading, “We buy gold.”
“It definitely is ‘shameful,’ ” Mr. Johnson said. “With the fact that stock is going down, they shouldn’t be paid so much.”
Meanwhile, around the corner, Larry Meyers and Gerard Novello, who work for an Italian securities firm, ducked into a Mexican cantina for a drink. It was Mr. Meyers’s 43rd birthday, and he ordered the tequila.
“On Main Street, ‘bonus’ sounds like a gift,” he said. “But it’s part of the compensation structure of Wall Street. Say I’m a banker and I created $30 million. I should get a part of that.”
“There’s got to be a better term for it,” he added, turning to Mr. Novello.
“Earned income credit?” he wondered aloud.
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