… are not going to go over all that great. I understand the nature of compensation in the financial industry, but sometimes image is everything, and the industry has a pretty shabby image on Main Street.
From the link:
Ask yourself, in this day and age, with officially reported unemployment at 10.2%, the highest since 1983, should a 36-year-old derivatives trader get $10 million or $15 million in bonus money on top of a $400,000 to $1 million direct salary. It’s the hot-button money issue of our time, the only visible totem of Wall Street that the public can easily understand. The public sees headlines about stocks being up 62%, the Dow over 10,000, gold at $1,100 an ounce, interest rates at zero and a handful of financiers able to buy $40 million apartments.
It’s a great time to play the market, sure, but the overall effect on the economy is pretty hollow when small and medium businesses cannot borrow money. Treasury Secretary Geithner admits to this huge vacuum, but he has no concrete or meaningful solution.
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