Why Wall Street bonuses aren’t deserved.
Being the type of person who works hard for a living and makes a wage comparable to the work I do, it has always been grotesque to me the kind of compensation those in the financial industry receive as a standard of business. It’s one thing if those making these enormous amounts were the greatest sales people in the world or created something innovative and unique, but most of them are run-of-the-mill employees and sales people who couldn’t sell water to a fish if they really had to.
These people don’t deserve their bonuses and here’s why:
When people have money, where does that money go? It goes in a bank or a financial management institution. No one is keeping it under their pillow. A few people are investing it directly in hopes of making profits through other businesses. But not the majority. The majority of the United States sticks their money in a bank, mostly in money market accounts and mutual funds. Now, unlike my business where you have to do a song and dance just to convince people you have value to them, a bank does not suffer from this fate (well, until recently). If you decided to pursue a job as a broker, very likely you’d be able to find people to give you money. It’s not as hard as selling someone on investing in a movie. You’ve got a bank. You’ve got thousands of employees. You have many mutual funds and products and the odds are some of them are giving decent returns even if others are not. It’s the luck of the draw with large companies.
So, really, how hard do you have to sell someone - as a bank employee, a financial planner or a fund operator - on your products and their need to give their money to you. In my opinion, pretty easy. Sure, you might have to wine and dine the deep pocketed a little (one the company’s dime, not yours), but in the end it’s like selling the popular car on the lot; you KNOW people are going to come looking for it.
Therefore, my disgust with the multi-million dollar bonuses afforded these assholes at AIG and banking firms is enormous. THEY HAD THE EASIEST SALES JOB IN THE WORLD. Give me money. I’ll get you 10%. 15%. 20%. Just look at my fund/money market/ira/etc.
Do they deserve some bonus for bringing in business? Sure. Something reasonable. But the majority of the money made from these accounts SHOULD GO IN THE POCKET OF THE PERSON GIVING THEM THE MONEY!
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I knew a secretary on Wall Street making $225,000 ten years ago. She wasn’t even involved in selling. I have other friends who work in different firms. Only one of them is a trader. The others have salaries of $150,000 or more - and still get substantial 6 figure bonuses for doing nothing more than pushing paper and knowing a few things. Reason? There’s ALOT of clients. It’s a bank. EVERYONE who ever put money into a bank is a client that they can manipulate profits from - sometimes for doing NOTHING.
Given the state of America, there needs to be some consideration for the users of banks over the brokers who know very little. Most of Wall Street is legalized gambling. They can call it whatever they want, but that’s all it is. If they knew anything, why would be where we are now?
