Top 5 Wall Street firms to pay $90 billion in bonuses this month (NYT)

[somone]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/06/business/06bonus.html

Tax Fear May Move Bonuses Earlier
By LOUISE STORY and GRETCHEN MORGENSON

Congress is debating tax rates, and that has Wall Street nervously eyeing the calendar. Worried that lawmakers will allow taxes to rise for the wealthiest Americans beginning next year, financial firms are discussing whether to move up their bonus payouts from next year to this month. At stake is a portion of the hefty annual payouts that are a familiar part of the compensation culture on Wall Street, as well as a juicy target of popular anger...

Bonus payouts are traditionally shrouded in secrecy; companies are required to disclose their top executives’ pay, but they do not disclose the size of their total bonus pools in their public filings or internally. Goldman often announces its top executives’ bonuses before other firms, and the richness of its payouts sets the tone across the industry. This year the tax debate has imposed a new wrinkle, and executives at two large banks said their companies tentatively decided not to speed payouts, unless Goldman did. Then, these two executives said, they would consider paying early as a competitive measure, so that their workers were not upset...

Wall Street firms pay out billions of dollars in bonuses each year. In good years top executives can receive bonuses worth tens of millions of dollars. Even midlevel financial workers often earn above $250,000 a year, and they receive most of their compensation as bonuses paid early in the new year. Extending the tax cuts for all Americans with taxable income over $250,000 for joint filers ($200,000 for single filers) would cost the country about $40 billion next year, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, and it would cost $700 billion over the next decade...

The top five Wall Street firms have put aside nearly $90 billion for total pay this year, and they are expected to raise that amount using their end of year earnings. That would make this year one of the best ever for bank pay... Some compensation consultants have been helping their clients devise new labels for the pay that are less likely to inflame the public. For instance, some banks are considering reducing the amount of their payouts that are labeled as bonuses, and instead shifting some to other categories like “long-term incentives.” Depending on how banks structure this part of the payout package, it might not represent much of a change for bankers, since it has long been standard practice to tie up some pay for a few years for retention purposes. But the goal was to make the dollar amounts appear less offensive...

[Newsjock]

1. What about guillotine fear?

These un-American bastards need to be brought down, HARD.

[enough]

3. No fear of that, as they are well aware. (nt)

[Lorien]

4. Sometimes it looks like that's what it's going to take

they're shameless.

[tabatha]

2. Absolutely appalling.

Sickening. Revolting. They did not earn that.

[RedCloud]

5. And yet the unemployed are hounded for getting about 1/3 of that just to live.

[Mojorabbit]

18. The whole thing is breathtaking

isn't it? Millions have lost their unemployment lifeline and they go on as if the bailout never happened.

[gateley]

6. That sickens me. nt

[HCE SuiGeneris]

9. Yes, gut-wrenching. Flaunting the ridiculous 'compensation', the banks and banksters say fuck you

to the rest of America.

[SoCalNative]

7. I hope they all

die excruciatingly slow, painful deaths.

[dkf]

8. Financial firms needs to redo their compensation packages to not incentivize exhorbitant risk taking

The bonuses really are a reflection of how much of other people's money they put at risk, and how much we the taxpayer are on the line for should these trades have gone the wrong way. This is also evidence of putting the companies trading interests ahead of those of it's clients.

Wall Street needs to separate out it's services from it's investment arms. The little guy will never believe this is a fair situation until the investment bankers stick to their jobs of providing funding and stay out of proprietary trading

[sasha031]

10. they have no shame

[midnight]

11. Those 90 billion dollar bonuses being paid this month while

few new jobs are created, federal workers pay are frozen, and health care premiums rise are a sin.....

[Anakin Skywalker]

12. More Tax Breaks for the Rich, Anyone?

This is what private corporations do with tax breaks. So much for "creating jobs"!

[Hannah Bell]

13. Pay freezes for fed employees = $2.5 B. Rescinding Bush tax cuts for rich = $67 B. Priorities.

Those fucks are getting more in "bonuses" than the entire 1-year tax cut package for everyone making >$250K.

Amazing, unprecedented transfer of wealth from the majority to the entitled minority of the ruling class.

[defendandprotect]

14. ... but America can't afford MEDICARE FOR ALL .... only bailouts for wealthy--!!!

[Catherina]

15. Well thank God it passed!

:sarcasm:

[Initech]

16. The worst people in the world, hands down. Fuck Wall Street.

[leftstreet]

17. Yippee!

[TexasObserver]

19. Two years ago, they were looking at financial ruin without govt funding.

Today, they're saints who don't even have to say "thank you" to the citizens who saved them.