Perverse Incentives Are Endemic (TM)
They could go to Citigroup, as UBS found out in losing its top energy investment banker. The upper half of the article was all about the money, which is really the only reason for such an article being on the front page. Does the average WSJ reader care at all about Citi’s internal staffing decisions? […]
Read more...The NYT provides a good story about how the Wall Street pay restrictions may be having its effect. Some of the remaining glib tropes we’ll undoubtedly to hear: – “So what? How much can these people have been worth to companies they helped drive under?” – “They don’t need these people. The industry had to […]
Read more...Remember the withering criticism of retention awards for the Smith Barney brokers? You can get reminders here, here, here, … The gist of the critiques was nothing so sophisticated as the need to actually retain people. It was more on the order of grunts about “greed,” “pay for failure,” and “taxpayer theft,” etc. At the […]
Read more...It had to come to this. After months of bonus baiting, with everyone asking “where else could they go?” After Andrew Cuomo invited every banker unfortunate enough to find himself in the Journal or Times into his office to ask why they made so much money. After the press smacked Geithner around like a pinata. […]
Read more...Reading about governance in the first villages of New England, I come across lessons that keep getting repeated, down to our time. In 1641 the English Civil War triggered an economic crisis across the ocean. It threatened to disrupt relationships and supplies from the mother country upon which the colony depended, causing a number of […]
Read more...So, you’ve played the populist card on executive compensation, Mr. President. You used it to provide cover for the mammoth, Democratic-payback-mondo-porkfest called the “Stimulus Package.” You used $500K to buy $787B. Well played, sir. But now that card is on the table. You can’t just pick it up again. So, now we all have a […]
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