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How Not To Feel Sorry For Anyone On Wall Street

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by Kevin Maney
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Sep 23 2008 9:45am EDT

How Not to Feel Sorry for Anyone on Wall Street

Kevin Maney writes: Not all that many years ago, I watched dot-com companies go kerblooey in a blink. I had friends at a number of those companies. Most of them had ridden the bubble up and made more money than I'll see in my lifetime. Maybe they lost a chunk of change when their companies imploded, but what about all the money they'd made before that? There was no reason to feel sorry for most of them.

Same thing this time around. I read today about how Hank Paulson and Barney Frank are locking up over how to treat the pay of CEOs who submit to federal bailouts. And here and there, you hear concerns about all those unemployed people from Lehman Brothers or the pay cuts at Bear Stearns.

Get a grip.

I found this chart below on the BankersBall site. It shows the 2006 bonuses at the big Wall Street firms. Of course the money wasn't distributed evenly to each employee, but just about everyone at these companies shared in the wealth. And the bonuses are a reflection of the money made by making the risky investments that led to federal action.

The average total compensation at Goldman was over $1 million in 2006!


2006 Bonuses
Goldman Morgan Merrill Lehman Bear Stearns
Total Comp $16.9 $14.0 $16.1 $8.7 $4.4
Bonus Pool $10.2 $8.4 $9.7 $5.2 $2.6
Employees 25,647 54,349 55,300 24,775 13,000
Average Comp $658,946 $257,594 $291,139 $351,160 $338,462
Average Bonus $397,707 $154,556 $174,683 $210,696 $203,077

Total comp & bonus pool in billions. Source: Bloomberg


Oh, and while I was on BankersBall, I found this hilarious post about out-of-work Lehman associates, who suddenly have a lot of money and a lot of time on their hands, posting personals on Craigslist...


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