Incentives on Wall Street - your opinion

"The fact that Socgen getting massively blown up doesn't inspire fear (or even loathing) - but a roasting and laughter should be a stunningly visceral example of the rot in the Street's DNA.

As a very simple example, there's almost zero incentive to manage (money, assets, etc) for long-run value creation, because near risk-free short-run compensation, like cash bonuses, massively outweighs risk-bearing long-run compensation. Etc..."

This is from a blogger named Umair. He is allegedly on the cutting edge of economic thought, but I'm not sure if I agree, and I'm sure there are plenty of others here who would outright disagree.

On the one hand, it seems like a fairly obvious point that a lot of people would say "duh" to, but on the other hand, there ARE guys in it for the long term. This industry is packed with hardcore types who want to be billionaires, or the next Secretary of the Treasury, etc. Look at Warren Buffett; he could've stopped working 30 years ago. The ones who are in it for early retirement, though, I can't argue against.