{"id":334,"date":"2008-11-17T00:20:53","date_gmt":"2008-11-17T08:20:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/?p=334"},"modified":"2008-11-17T00:20:53","modified_gmt":"2008-11-17T08:20:53","slug":"how-to-be-off-by-100-yet-still-closer-than-everyone-else","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/how-to-be-off-by-100-yet-still-closer-than-everyone-else\/","title":{"rendered":"How to be off by 100%, yet still closer than everyone else"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Remember the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hodakvalue.com\/blog\/2008\/10\/preemptive_greed_baiting.html#more\">preemptive &#8220;greed baiting&#8221;<\/a> over the last several weeks, those breathless reports about how much financial services executives were going to get in bonuses this miserable year?  So called compensation experts have &#8220;gone through the numbers&#8221; supposedly showing that bonuses would be <a href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/topstories\/feeds\/ap\/2008\/10\/24\/ap5604169.html\">every bit as high as last year<\/a>.  These tinfoil speculations sent the likes of Andrew Cuomo and Henry Waxman into fits of outrage.  My prediction to any reporter who asked (you&#8217;re welcome, Liz) was a bonus drop of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/2008\/10\/21\/compensation-bonuses-crisis-biz-wall-cx_lm_1021bonus.html\">30-50%<\/a> (among the survivors).<\/p>\n<p>Well, in the case of Goldman Sachs, I was off by, oh, 100 percent.  The firm is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/11\/17\/business\/economy\/17goldman.html?_r=1&#038;ref=business&#038;oref=slogin\">announcing today<\/a> that their top seven executives will forgo ALL of their bonuses for 2008.<\/p>\n<p>The top guys at Goldman are all mensch, and they have big kahunas risking the loss of talent to less politically savvy Wall Street sharks.  But they know what&#8217;s good for the franchise, and are now putting tremendous pressure on their weaker peers (and they&#8217;re all weaker) by putting this out there right now.<\/p>\n<p>Whaddya say, Mack?  Are you willing to go another year without a bonus?  Are you still tapping away to see how much Harry, Dick, and Jane should get (or Colm, Michael, Fabrizio&#8230;)?  Save yourself the trouble.  They aren&#8217;t going anywhere in 2009.<\/p>\n<p>Collectively, Goldman&#8217;s munificent seven have sacrificed about $200 million on the altar of envy.  I&#8217;m sure the politicians will take credit for the sacrifice, then take credit for the Spring rain that follows, when all they did was build the altar.<\/p>\n<p>All I have to look forward to next Spring is a much simpler proxy statement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Remember the preemptive &#8220;greed baiting&#8221; over the last several weeks, those breathless reports about how much financial services executives were going to get in bonuses this miserable year? So called compensation experts have &#8220;gone through the numbers&#8221; supposedly showing that bonuses would be every bit as high as last year. These tinfoil speculations sent the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-executive-compensation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}