Trying on $400 dollar shoes

Just to try and understand the attitude of the banksters.

The Mindset of an AIG executive by Diane Brady

Some select quotes from the article:

“I was in no way involved in — or responsible for — the credit default swap transactions that have hamstrung A.I.G.” The list of who to vilify grows ever smaller. Even colleagues in the financial products unit are determined to distance themselves from the credit default swaps. These were highly profitable products produced by highly compensated (and, I would guess, much celebrated) people when times were good. Now, it would appear that a handful of largely anonymous—and now departed—executives are responsible for AIG’s downfall, not an institution that fostered and rewarded a culture of risk.

“The profitability of the businesses with which I was associated clearly supported my compensation.” This is the argument that has so many people feeling so angry. Just because you write enough transactions to rack up, say, $100 million in profits for your firm doesn’t mean you’re automatically entitled to millions in compensation. By that logic, producing millions in losses should send you reaching into your own pocket to repay your salary. For too long, there have been excessive rewards for short-term profits and little if any incentive to protect against the downside.

Personally, I think they should be on the sidewalk

With a tin cup.



Via Chet Scoville of Vanity Press.

If you are looking for a job in law

These look cushy:

...Later this spring, elite law firms will again be offering Supreme Court law clerks signing bonuses of $200,000 (last year's rate) or even more for their first jobs as practicing lawyers.

That will be $200,000 on top of a starting salary of $145,000 to $160,000. Which adds up to an awful lot of Pottery Barn sectional furniture for someone who is, on average, 26 years old and just two years out of school. As Chief Justice John Roberts pointed out recently, that $360,000 beats the heck out of the $212,100 he's taking home for, well, chief justice-ing the entire nation.

The so-called "law clerk bonus" is a one-way ratchet, it seems. In a bidding war between boutique appellate practices at the nation's fanciest firms, the bonus not only rises each year, but seemingly it does so exponentially. When it hit $150,000 two years ago, it was hard to pick myself off the floor. Thomas Goldstein, who recently started the Supreme Court litigation section at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer Feld, confirms that in the major markets, no large firm can expect to pay less than $200,000. "The only question," he says, "is whether it will be more."