Bonuses Schmonuses
If it were my decision, I wouldn’t give a dime to Wall Street to pay for CEO bonuses. But, as we all know, it’s not up to me.
I saw a segment on “The Early Show” this morning that posed this very controversial question to the experts, which made me decide that I really don’t care if these CEOs get their bonuses or how much the bonuses are–the thing I mostly care about is: Where is the money coming from?
Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley each have $6.8 billion and $6.4 billion, respectively, set aside for bonuses. However, U.S. taxpayers are saying that these bonuses should be eliminated.
“I may not understand everything, but I do understand common sense, and when you lend money to someone, you don’t want to see them at a new-car dealer the next day,” said Ken Karlson, a 61-year-old Vietnam veteran and freelance marketer in Wheaton, Illinois. “The bailout money shouldn’t have been given to them in the first place.”
On the other hand, Massachusetts Sen. Barney Frank says that none of the money from the bailout will be given to bonuses and that “all of the money is to go into new loans.”
While I don’t feel too strongly about either side on this issue, I think it’s a moot point. Losing a bonus is a much nicer gift than losing your house or losing your job.
Here’s the CBS piece I talked about earlier.
My favorite line in this piece is: “If firms don’t pay out the big bonuses, they’re afraid they might lose the top talent.”
Which leads me to ask: Would it be so bad to lose the people that got us into this mess in the first place?