Bankers are as valuable as film stars or athletes, insists Goldman Sachs director

[Joanne98]

We mere mortals need to shape up our thinking. Goldman Sachs' employees are so special that they ought to be viewed in the same category as professional athletes and movie stars, according to a board member of the Wall Street behemoth.

Bill George, a former boss of the medical technology firm Medtronic who has been a Goldman Sachs director since 2002, has delivered a curious defence of the bank's likely payout of $22bn to its employees for 2009 in an interview with a video website, BigThink.com.

"The shareholder value is made up in people and you need the people there to do the job, says George, at about the 2 mins 40 mark in this clip. "If you don't pay them for their performance, you'll lose them. It's much like professional athletes and movie stars."

As far as I'm aware, it's the first time that anyone on Goldman's top floor has gone quite this far. He is implying that a Goldman trader has just as much unique talent as a Wayne Rooney or a Sigourney Weaver - and that the average employee's expected haul of more than $700,000 is fair.

But George then goes off on another riff, saying he can't help it if film stars, athletes and bankers are overvalued by society en masse.

"I can't justify the relationship between a trader's bonus and what a schoolteacher makes, for instance. I mean in our society - we have a much deeper societal issue," he says. "It's hard for me to justify what an athlete makes when he plays basketball compared to what a schoolteacher makes or even an engineer...I worry about these a lot but I haven't figured out how to solve it yet, either."

George, incidentally, is a director of one other public company - ExxonMobil - giving him a clean sweep of the two US firms viewed with the greatest suspicion by people on the left.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/andrew-clark-on-america/2010/jan/05/goldmansachs-banks

[napi21]

1. OK! I'll but that. I think movie stars & athletes are grossly

overpaid too! And your next argument is????

[SB37]

2. Actually, I agree with him....

People should be paid based on their perfomance (including teachers and engineers). And, athletes and actors are grossly overpaid....

I have no problem with anybody being "viewed in the same category as professional athletes and movie stars".

[hobbit709]

4. And if movie stars and athletes underperform

They don't get big salaries and bonuses.

[no_hypocrisy]

3. To quote "Bonfire of the Vanities", they are THE MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

5. Where can I order my Bill George Nike's?

Let's see...

Assume Michael Jordan is replaced by Stan Smith, a middling player no one has ever heard of. What happens to Chicago Bulls attendance? Do Nike, Corn Flakes, and whomever else immediately put Stan Smith's endorsement on all of their products? I don't think so. (This is not intended in any way to defend the obscene salaries that some sports players draw, by the way--that's a whole different issue)

Compare to:

Bill George is replaced on the board of directors with Smedley Pennypincher, a competent if middling criminal who has just the right background to step into Mr. George's shoes. What happens at Medtronic? What happens at the Exxon gas pump? Nothing, that's what happens. People just keep on buying or not buying, whatever they were doing before the criminal switchover. The only bar that Smedley had to clear was attending Harvard Business or similar, and learning how to putt.

Now compare that to James Cameron. Suppose he decided to become a monk the week before filming for Avatar started. That's about a billion dollars the studio would not have brought in to date, and climbing.

Now what was this little pinhead's point?