We have all witnessed the circus surrounding the big Wall St. bailout that has been going on for a couple of weeks now.
Trust me the big shots like Len Lewis (CEO Bank of America), Lloyd C. Blankfein (Goldman Sachs), James Dimon (JP Morgan Chase) are watching this whole thing with keen interest and in fact lobbying like mad behind the scenes in favor of this bailout.
And they know darn well that the issue of their compensation WILL come up.
What floors me is that they ask for so much from the rest of us (the bailout is estimated to cost $3,000 for every man woman and child in this country), yet they offer no sacrifice whatsoever from themselves.
There could be a grand gesture from these guys that would take the issue of executive compensation right out of this bailout controversy and grease the works in favor of quick passage. Remember Lee Iacocca? He offered to work for 1$ for a year in return for a government guaranteed loan. He asked for something and he offered something back and the whole thing worked.
Fast forward 28 years. Now Wall St. comes hat in hand to Washington and asks for a hell of a lot more than Iacocca ever asked for yet they offer...nothing. They lecture day after day that if Wall St. does not get bailed out then there will be financial Armageddon for everyone. Give us a huge bailout or we all go down. Sounds almost like blackmail. It would not seem so much like blackmail if they offered something back- but they offer nothing.
Ken Lewis could offer to work for 1$ for a year. Lloyd C. Blankfein could offer to work for a $1 for one year, James Dimon (JP Morgan Chase) could offer to work for $1 next year also. A grand gesture like that from Wall St. leaders would take the executive compensation issue off the table and be quite inspiring to all of us. But we hear nothing of the sort. It looks like they are looking at this as a high stakes poker game and they are trying to get the other side (congress and by extension the other 299 million of us) to blink first giving them yet another huge windfall.
Notice that I have chosen people in this post (Ken Lewis, Lloyd C. Blankfein and James Dimon) who who are currently viewed as having done a good job over the last several years. You might think something along the lines of "these men should be rewarded, the ones who did a bad job punished" hence the sky's the limit for their compensation. But these men are the ones who will benefit from this massive bailout. These guys have already gotten paid for their prior performance, this bailout will give them even more.
They come now to the federal government and ask that the taxpayer pay about $3,000 apiece to them. To put it as succinctly as I can: the "bad" CEO's have already lost their jobs and are out, they will not benefit from this bailout. Lewis, Blankfein, Dimon and guys like that WILL benefit PERSONALLY from this (as it is now constructed) and in a very big way. And these guys engaged in the very same things that the others did! They just played the game better so others went down first.
Take a look at the compensation last year for these guys and grok on who and what your $3000 is going for:
Lloyd C. Blankfein $70,323,572
James Dimon: $27,766,073
Ken Lewis: $21,601,594
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source: salary.com
Note: there are lots more wealthy bankers and brokers who will also be getting a piece of your $3000.
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