NY Times-End Bonuses for Bankers, thoughts?
From Op Ed - End Bonuses for Bankers
its current financial health, would require a taxpayer-financed bailout if it failed, should not get a bonus, ever. In fact, all pay at systemically important financial institutions — big banks, but also some insurance companies and even huge hedge funds — should be strictly regulated.""Instead, it’s time for a fundamental reform: Any person who works for a company that, regardless of
That company restricted from paying bonuses would cease to exist. The sharks would be circling. All of their talent would go elsewhere. Might as well just turn off the lights. I didn't read the article because cash cab is on.
Haha
That would be awesome. Investment banking is a leachers occupation. It adds no systemic value. Lending is the only systemic function required of banking. It's basically a small club where you're a guaranteed winner once you're in. Since you're gambling with taxpayer assets, they have no choice but to bail you out when you lose.
An added side effect is all of that ivy talent would no longer have an incentive to spend their lives figuring out new ways to game the system, and instead might focus on creating new and innovative ways of solving real problems.
Yea, instead we would all become scientist's and build a super awesome spaceship that could take us anywhere but here. I can't wait until this era of sandy vagina, self-pity, underachievement, and self entitlement is over. Making a blanket statement that banks don't add any value is pretty bold, and wrong in my opinion. This attitude that (investment)banks are evil/greedy is a malignant ideology that is causing spillover effects and threatening to not only hinder our financial system but also our free market and individual rights. That is a terrifying thought to me, only just about to turn 24.
America, and the greater population, should be required to complete a competency test before being granted the right to freedom of speech. It is concerning that one day I might not be able to partake in a free market environment because stupidity and ignorance prevail.
Author is the guy who wrote "The Black Swan: Impact of the Highly Improbable". This isn't just your average NYTimes journalism major so don't just write him off without at least considering what he has to say. That said outlawing bonuses would completely upend the compensation system of banks and would also be a huge overreach of the power that the government should have over the free market.
NNT's point is that you can't have it both ways. He thinks that either you're an investment bank and then you can give whatever bonuses you want, or you're a commercial bank that is backed by the gov't in which case you shouldn't. That isn't an overreach of power, that's just the gov't saying we aren't going to insure firms that incentivize risk taking with other people's money.
... not everyone respects Taleb's book FYI, especially those in AM.
Stopped reading the article after "End Bonuses for Bankers".
Without bonuses, first-year's base salary would be 130k.
Yeah, that was going to be my comment...although I'm not sure if $130k would be the right number. Anyways, the point is, you would be advocating for the elimination of variable pay in exchange for a more permanent pay...which really would only cause more problems if the institution ever encountered any financial problems.
Also, I hope this article was written in response to the bonuses that the executives at Fannie and Freddie got last year.
Regards
Yeah, I don't understand how people can bemoan CS and UBS's rigid comp structures and say end bonuses at the same time.
I can't think of very many negative externalities to IBD bonuses, beyond what you would expect in any performance monitored sales business (oversell product value to the client)
Arguably having traders pay the sales bonuses on some desks (FI mostly, don't know much about derivatives) leads to conflicts of interests, which sophisticated clients understand and thus discount what their sales guy and his research analyst have to say. Arguably trading bonuses or % of book in a world where our risk models suck and the risk managers are not respected (i.e. MF Global not GS) creates a moral hazard problem. Research bonuses determined by bankers used to cause lots of issues pre-reform, and still can cause some, but II and other rankings reduce this effect
He basically thinks that Glass-Steagall should be put back in place and investment and commercial banking should be separate again. Investment bankers would be able to keep their bonuses so don't get your panties in a twist after just reading the headline.
I met with Nassim a bunch of times, he's a really smart guy but way too arrogant for his own good. He's good at recognizing complex problems but comes up short with actual solutions.
I have heard things along the lines of him being arrogant like a professor and a douchebag like a Wall Street native. Regardless of his beliefs, he has had a bigger take home from writing books than from trading, which is something a lot of people do not know. I can't tell if he would call himself a believer in Austrian economics, but his disdain for econometric modeling of human behavior makes me think he is. Either way, I wouldn't invest in him with my life savings, or anyone else's for that matter. I can buy physical gold, farmland, and SPY puts just as easily as the next guy.
Didn't read the article, but if you could force this down the throat of every substitute employer that traders might jump to, where is the talent going to go? The superstars will get snapped up by hedge funds but the remainder will have no choice but to stay.
Also, assuming you could somehow freeze base pay at current levels (i.e. preventing banks from making up the difference by increasing base), the irony is that no one would take outsized risks because they wouldn't be compensated for it. Salespeople and traders would just care less about work, and financial innovation would probably be frozen in its current state, or at best, progress very slowly.
Isn't this the case with almost every industry? If we could somehow only compensate on performance we would be leaps and bounds ahead of where we are now.
You should probably read the article before you opine on it...
I just don't think that is true. Traders and the like are typically all type A to the tenth power. They are in trading because it's stimulating and they are challenged. Yeah, I'm sure they love making money, but if they couldn't go anywhere else because the market was being controlled by regulation, they would still do their best to 'win' by having the largest gains, etc. You remember being a kid and wanting to be stronger and faster, etc. than everyone else? It's the same concept. I didn't do more pull-ups or score more touchdowns because I got a bonus from the neighborhood kids' weekly allowances...I did it because I wanted to be better than the rest.
Regards
If this fuck wants to move to a communist country where government controls companies then he's more than welcome to do so. We don't want/need that shit here in the land of the free.
Yeah! This is the land of consequences! When the fat cat bankers blew themselves up we let them go under because we're free market capitalists, damn it! Oh, wait...
I was going to post the same thing but figured i should scroll down and make sure u hadnt first!
In this business capitalism is only acceptable when things go well!
^Didn't read the article. Glass-Steagall.
America! Fuck Yeah!
"Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a professor of risk engineering at New York University Polytechnic Institute, is the author of “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.” He is a hedge fund investor and a former Wall Street trader."
I bet he felt the same way when he was an MD at UBS and 'chief arbitrage derivative trader for commodities, currencies, and non-dollar fixed income' at CSFB.
Rich stuff coming from a guy who lost money in 2001 running a "black swan fund".
"Markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent!"
I don't give a fuck if my money manager is sane as long as he makes me money.
If a company fails, I do not believe that the people who are responsible should be paid out. How about companies start doing the smart thing and put a clause in employment contracts to the effect of "causing a net loss to the company shall jeopardize any bonus and severance agreements". This way, I'm not penalized if the moron in the office next to me is careless and fucks up. This and deferred compensation would put an end to golden parachutes for retards fucking things up and then bailing on the company....and would benefit the people like YOU and ME who do what they're supposed to: make $$$$ bro.
How about the Times sticking to publishing news and not trying to play corporate consultant.
It's an op ed. Also, more of a political statement than anything else.
A lot of managing directors I know say banking is "sort of a scam" and that they are overpaid relative to their value and "talent." It's the entry-level folks who actually take themselves seriously and think they are important.
If you've got "talent" you'll be able to succeed elsewhere or in a more difficult environment. If you suck, you won't.
Being responsible for a lot of money or having a lot of education are hardly good reasons to deserve anything. There are lots of people with better educations who teach at universities. There are plenty of civil servants who are responsible for money.
If the market shrinks and the talent rises to the top (to PE shops or to fewer, less regulated institutions), we'll all be better for it so that all the overpaid idiots in finance get washed out. It's like most things, and probably only 20% of people at banks actually add any real value.
I suspect most of the whining comes from the bottom 80%.
-Former bottom 80%er...
I can't wait for the NYT to go bankrupt, what a rag. This Glass-Steagall bullshit is really getting old too, considering how important deposits were for liquidity at banks like JPM during the crisis. Oh, so you want to take away the largest and most stable source of capital so there's less catastrophic risk? Good idea, fucknut socialists.
I wouldn't say the idea of investment banking is leeching. Lending is perhaps the most tangible aspect of it, but I'd argue that investment bankers who actually care about making the right deals are of some of the highest value to the economy on a per capita basis. If capital isn't going to the right places, the economy suffers. Instead of having the government control the flow of capital, we recognize the profit motive and a free market price system to give these signals. I guess if every corporation knew how to manage its finances, acquisitions, etc. without any outside help then banking would be a scam. I don't think that's the case, though.
I would like to note several fallacies the author makes as well:
1) He criticizes bankers for not propagating hysteria about Black Swan events that he admits are difficult to predict and rare, supposedly because of a desire for bonuses. 2) We should assume bailouts are here to stay forever. 3) Incentive-based pay leads workers to be less-productive than salaries.
All-in-all, fuck this guy.
I don't buy the idea that investment bankers are necessary to efficiently and and effectively allocate capital. I think the government would be even worse at that game, but my gut says the amount withdrawn from markets by bankers exceeds whatever value they add, in the context of efficient allocation of resources. I suspect, without having numbers to make a legit argument, that the effect of a world without IB as we know it, would be net positive.
I guess it's a good counter argument is to say "if that were true, why do bankers exist?". My only answer is that it's an entrenched system that was worth what it cost 100 years ago, and is too powerful to be banished today.
What would you identify as the source of this transition, assuming your premise is true? Banks going public?
Posting this on a Wallstreet aspiring monkey forum is the equivilent of posting "god hates fags" on a LGBT forum. You might really, really believe something to be true, but we really dont give a fuck. We're here to make money, bonuses are here to stay.
Bonuses are just part of the compensation structure. Companies will find other ways to reward their traders and analysts if it becomes too difficult to pay them. The Times is ridiculous.
Duff, I read the article. I am for Glass Steagal. I am strongly against government attempting to regulate pay of a private corporation.
I am also 100% against bailouts.
These corporations are only quasi private in their existence as Too Big to Fail entities. It's like they have an invisible revolver with the US government. Until something is done to structurally change this, I have difficulty taking much issue with the author's POV that their pay should be regulated. This goes for Fannie and Freddie as well, obviously.
I don't see how regulating pay solves anything. Under that scenario you let the TBTFs keep their revolver but put it in the hands of lower paid executives. The only solution is to take away their gun.
Pro Glass-Steagall.
I think the repeal of Dodd-Frank and reinstitution of Glass Steagal would solve this, no?
Reinstitution of Glass Steagall would pretty much nullify the need for parts (most) of Dodd-Frank.
Essentially you are agreeing with the author of the Op Ed. He wasn't being a Communist by suggesting that these "private corporations" aren't actually private, and therefor should be subject to the same scrutiny as public institutions.
Gekko says: This turkey is totally braindead!
under glass stegall were investment banks allowed to offer bridge financing
Why not get rid of ALL the government subsidies and guarantees? I can think of no other industry that receives as much as banking.
I miss when we lived in a society that didn't feel compelled to dictate everyone's income...
How will eliminating bonuses solve anything or help anyone? Somehow, I doubt the Times would complain if teachers or other public servants were paid enormous bonuses. That would be public money too, wouldn't it?
That's not really the point. I think we all agree that we don't want the government dictating incomes for private industry. The issue in question is whether or not banks should be considered private industry. The whole premise of letting the market dictate winners and losers goes out the window if the participant in question absolutely can't be allowed to lose, i.e. if they do, the rest of the ship goes down with them. That knowledge allows them to take risks knowing there is no downside, which flies in the face of a market driven system (i.e. we subscribe to a market system in part because we know it enforces an upper bound on risk taking, because participants are self interested and want to avoid bankruptcy).
Since we built a system that relies entirely on day to day IOU's (i.e. intra bank overnight lending, commercial paper, lines of credit, etc.), it's a fact that if banks stop lending, EVERYTHING grinds to a halt. Since they know that, they take risks far in excess of what they would if bankruptcy was really on the table. For you cheerleaders beating the drums of a true free market - the current banking system isn't it. It's an entrenched system that gorges itself on the upside of massive risk taking, and insulates itself from the downside with taxpayer money.
Amen
This is a more eloquent version of what I was trying to say earlier. Good post.
Brilliant post. And yet, would reinstating Glass-Steagall really solve that problem? I don't think so. There would still be banks and shadow banks out there that could crash the system on failing.
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