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Notes to myself, possibly of interest to others.
-- Bill Northlich

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Yves Smith - Banker Pay

...banksters are getting record pay for 2010, after having gotten record pay for 2009…after having wrecked the global economy.

...this is just continued looting. The profits the banking industry is showing is heavily dependent on government subsidies: super low interest rates, regulatory forbearance, and its kissing cousin, dubious accounting (for instance, a lot of banks have been underreserving). So these are not in any normal sense private sector profits, yet we allow the banking industry to maintain that they are and pay a ton of these fictive returns out rather than retaining them to bolster their equity bases...

The best methods to induce a real change in values would be criminal prosecutions, barring lesser miscreants from the industry for life (and we don’t mean young insider traders, but business unit managers for more complex abuses), and measures that come closer to approximating unlimited liability, like clawbacks (if someone who leaves his firm with a big hole in its balance sheet can have pretty much all of his tangible wealth seized, that might focus a few minds).
---source

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