CNBC reports that fifty executives at Goldman Sachs will each receive
bonuses of $25 million or more. Yes, you read correctly. $25 million
each. And the reason, according to CNBC is that these sharpies would
otherwise jump ship for hedge fund nirvana if not lavishly tipped.
Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch also will each smack twelve employees
over the head with golden stockings full of $25 million. Note, Goldman
Sachs was rumored to have driven the price of oil down for the election
season by applying huge sums of money to twiddle the futures market,
and note, too, that the Secretary of the Treasury, Hank Paulson, was
CEO of Goldman Sachs until the middle of last summer. But, of course, I
am fond of saying that I am allergic to conspiracy theories.
I do have another theory, though. I admit, it's just a hunch, a
wild-ass guess, a twinge in the gut. It's that come 2007, New York's new
governor, Elliot Spitzer, and the new state attorney general, Andrew
Cuomo, will go after these grifters like a couple of mastiffs in a
basement full of rats -- just like Spitzer went after Dick Grasso, the
CEO of the New York Stock Exchange, who, in 2003, received a "deferred
compensation" package of $140-million, awarded by a hand-picked NYSE
compensation committee composed of executives from the very listed
companies Grasso was supposed to regulate. His venality unbound, Grasso
then arranged to receive an additional $48-million when the embarrassed
NYSE board made him step down from his job.
Of course, this
whole sordid tale raises some ineffable questions, such as, how exactly
does one's standard of living improve after, say, the first $140
million? How many private jet planes does it take to summon up that
certain glow of contentment achieved among the
testosterone-for-lunch-bunch? Anyway, the Grasso case is currently
awaiting trial. So far, the New York State Supreme Court issued a
summary decision ordering him to repay "a significant amount" of the
gazillions he walked away with. The cheeky Grasso countersued the NYSE
for "besmirching his name." Well he can sue me, too, because I am here
to tell you that Dick Grasso's behavior as fiduciary for a non-profit
corporation should be heralded from sea to shining sea as the most
disgraceful species of money-grubbing turpitude conceivable in a
sentient creature above the level of a howler monkey. I hope he spends
the rest of his life doing Chinese fire drills in the civil courts and
finally dies by getting sucked into the air intake of the starboard
engine of his private jet five minutes after the re-po man shows up
with a warrant for chattal surrender.
Excuse me. I am
momentarily afflicted with the vapors. Let's just say that the
inauguration of Messers Spitzer and Cuomo is but weeks away now, and
leave it at that. Stay tuned.
I have another, slightly
different idea, though, in a another vein. Casual observers like myself
have described the U.S. economy as being in a hideous state of unbalance.
On the one hand, we have the aforementioned Wall Street smoothies
raking in unbelievable bonus fortunes, while the rest of the nation
sinks into home equity quicksand wearing lead-lined suits manufactured
in ARM mortgage reset hell. The afflicted house owners can't even sell
their houses because the market is glutted with houses just like
theirs, now worth less than the mortgages owed on them and, guess what,
the supply of Greater Fools has finally dried up.
Why
doesn't the Wall Street bonus crowd, as a public service, step in and
invest all their supernaturally-acquired dough in the suburban house
market? To sort of even things out and prop things up. Since so much of
their bonus dough was probably generated through the magic of
mortgage-backed securities translated into hedges, carry plays,
leveraged derivatives gambits, commodity shorts, credit default swaps,
and other acts of financial legerdemain, then perhaps they owe it to
salt-of-the-earth America -- the distressed home-owner middle class
(not to mention the home-builders choking on oversupply of
their "product") -- to step into the breach and pony up for some of
those houses -- to prove that you really can base a post-industrial
economy on real estate sales.
LINK: Clusterfuck Nation