Horrible economic news. This makes me sad

Only bad people make six figures.

 

Yeah, this would be the first bonus pool going to the little guys. In the history of wall street, its always gone to the rainmakers.

THIS bonus pool was for peons.

 

There is a metric fuckload of false equivalency on this thread.

 

I didn't set my definition limits nearly high enough, as micro pointed out:

God forbid, if those 13 people are forced to take pay cuts $4 million, they save all the bonuses and quite a few of the jobs.

But as you said poin, cutting the highest executives' pay is not an option. The best and the brightest need to be retained, or else the company wouldn't be doing very well.

 

Well, there are those sorts of people out there, that's for sure.

But, what tangible product do people in financial services produce? To me, it's all a bunch of bullshit jargon and inside baseball aimed at extracting money out of what's left of the middle class.

 

Some of you people are unbelievable. And you have no semblance of shame. Just hope the rug doesn't get pulled out from under your family's feet.

 

The idea that a "rogue" trader is responsible for all these losses is laughable. UBS traders benefit from the massive bets their firm can place gambling with with shareholder/taxpayer money--not to mention lower funding costs courtesy of the implicit TBTF guarantee. But when one of those bets fails, it's because of a "rogue" trader, and not an inept management team that somehow allowed a trader to risk $2B of capital without anyone knowing.

And obviously, I feel a lot of sympathy for the lower-level employees: janitors, secretaries, etc. (although it will probably be much better the financial field is shrinking). But the rest of UBS ain't exactly on the side of angels. I can't imagine their investment bankers-from MDs to analysts-show much sympathy when they help engineer a merger that leads to thousands of layoffs. Nor did they do so when those in the fixed-income group sold their personal holdings of auction-rate securities while continuing to foist them off on companies and retirees.

 

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You mean like what happened to the middle class that used to earn its living in the manufacturing sector of the US over the past 30 years as living-wage jobs in this country were shipped overseas by CEOs in search of higher profits at the behest of Wall Street, and while executive compensation at said companies skyrocketed to heretofore unthinkable levels?

Yeah, I'll shed big tears for some company that pays its executives an average of $7 million per year, before bonuses and other perks. Big freaking tears.

 

Hey, let's have this argument again!

The majority of manufacturing jobs that were lost did not go overseas (or anywhere else outside of the border).

 

Really, it is sad - and a useful lesson than the Republican "just leave us be to make money and we will" strategy is just too risky as economic policy.

 

Mike Bloomberg did pretty good when he got let go by a big Wall St. firm.

I have no doubt some guys laid off will turn out much better off because they end up doing something they wouldn't have otherwise.