Pigs Get Fat and Hogs Get Slaughtered
The Senate hearings into Goldman Sachs financial shenanigans highlight how greedy bankers can get slaughtered if there is political will.
America’s bankers ─ the chefs who cooked the global financial meltdown, a dog’s breakfast of thousands of failed companies, millions unemployed and retirees penniless without health care in their wake ─ rewarded themselves with multi-million dollar caviar and champagne-laden golden parachutes and bonuses while taxpayers and their children and grandchildren pick up the tab. They obviously forgot what happened to Marie Antoinette, who had her head guillotined like a sausage because she said of the starving masses who didn’t have bread, “Let them eat cake.”
China is clipping the wings of its high-flying earners in financial institutions to prevent a widening income gap that can trigger social unrest. A concept the Obama administration toyed with and then dropped and appointed a salary czar to address. The Ministry of Finance issued a circular in April 2009 asking state-owned banks, insurers and securities firms to cut pre-tax income by at least 10 percent for top executives from 2007 salaries if the companies were more profitable in 2008 and by 20 percent if company profits declined. The ministry also announced a salary cap for financial services executives.
“The salary reduction is aimed to maintain social equality, protect rights and interests of the nation and shareholders and improve corporate governance,” the ministry said. Why isn’t America doing the same? Governments do need to rebalance the relationship between the state and the markets to create a fairer, more equal distribution of rewards. China did the right thing.
All American bankers have to do is apologize for their mistakes, get their bonuses and go back to business as usual.
“We participated in things that were clearly wrong and have reason to regret,” said Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, issuing an apology for its role in the financial crisis amid public anger over its record bonuses in 2009.
Wall Street’s utter disconnect from the rest of the world was laid bare for all to see when Blankfein was quoted as saying he’s doing “God’s work” at a Chinese business conference in New York. He went on to say that “everybody should be happy” that he and his peers are on track to take home billions in bonuses. People are happy, but not about the bonuses. They are happy to see Goldman Sachs charged with fraud and its greedy executives grilled.
America’s bankers ─ the chefs who cooked the global financial meltdown, a dog’s breakfast of thousands of failed companies, millions unemployed and retirees penniless without health care in their wake ─ rewarded themselves with multi-million dollar caviar and champagne-laden golden parachutes and bonuses while taxpayers and their children and grandchildren pick up the tab. They obviously forgot what happened to Marie Antoinette, who had her head guillotined like a sausage because she said of the starving masses who didn’t have bread, “Let them eat cake.”
China is clipping the wings of its high-flying earners in financial institutions to prevent a widening income gap that can trigger social unrest. A concept the Obama administration toyed with and then dropped and appointed a salary czar to address. The Ministry of Finance issued a circular in April 2009 asking state-owned banks, insurers and securities firms to cut pre-tax income by at least 10 percent for top executives from 2007 salaries if the companies were more profitable in 2008 and by 20 percent if company profits declined. The ministry also announced a salary cap for financial services executives.
“The salary reduction is aimed to maintain social equality, protect rights and interests of the nation and shareholders and improve corporate governance,” the ministry said. Why isn’t America doing the same? Governments do need to rebalance the relationship between the state and the markets to create a fairer, more equal distribution of rewards. China did the right thing.
All American bankers have to do is apologize for their mistakes, get their bonuses and go back to business as usual.
“We participated in things that were clearly wrong and have reason to regret,” said Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, issuing an apology for its role in the financial crisis amid public anger over its record bonuses in 2009.
Wall Street’s utter disconnect from the rest of the world was laid bare for all to see when Blankfein was quoted as saying he’s doing “God’s work” at a Chinese business conference in New York. He went on to say that “everybody should be happy” that he and his peers are on track to take home billions in bonuses. People are happy, but not about the bonuses. They are happy to see Goldman Sachs charged with fraud and its greedy executives grilled.
posted by Peter de Krassel's Custom Maid Politics at 8:33 PM
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