Dear Goldman Sachs
Couldn't be truer...
via The New York Times:
On Thursday, Mr. Blankfein and his colleagues will likely be subject to some of that anger when Goldman reports its third-quarter results — and discloses the latest tally of just how much its employees will probably take home for their work this year. By most analyst estimates, the annual bonus pool will swell to more than $23 billion. In its second quarter, Goldman disclosed it had put aside $11.4 billion for the first half of the year.
“The absolute size of compensation payouts will rise significantly,” Keith Horowitz, an analyst at Citigroup, wrote in a note to clients two weeks ago.
To put that $23 billion bonus pool number in perspective, it is the most Goldman Sachs has accumulated for bonuses in its history — twice as much as in 2008. And it is doing so while memories are still fresh that just a year ago taxpayers had to step in when Wall Street, and even Goldman, were facing a run on the bank.
If there is one thing that 'the Man' is good at doing, it's inflating his (its?) pockets at times when everyone else's pockets have been getting thinner. Goldman Sachs, you guys have proven to be, not the exception, but another example of the rule. In a time when people are using every last drop of toothpaste in the tube and have stopped buying SUV's, you guys still are a part of the gas-guzzling, toothpaste-wasting frame of mind that has pervaded our society for so long. That same frame has brought us to rock bottom economically and made the everyday Joes poorer everyday. Is that what the bailout did for you guys? Reinforce the same spending habits that put us in a recession in the first place? Is that what the $12 billion in government money was supposed to be for? Not to say that you guys don't have a right to use your money in the way that you want (hell, the government has been turning a blind eye to it for longer than we think), but shouldn't you guys be more concerned with getting out of the red and back into the black before you start patting yourselves on the back? That's like handing out victory cigars at the Titanic sinking: pointless and wasteful. Call me crazy, but somehow I think your executives would do fine without an extra billion in their wallets. But to tell you the truth, I had a feeling we'd be back to square one with one of the big financial firms. Your insidious spending is notorious on Wall Street. Hopefully your penchant for finding emergengy money is too, because I have a feeling you'll be needing another bailout by next year...