Scaring Financial experts out of the US
The Financial Times has this:
Bankers on Wall Street and in Europe have struck back against moves by US lawmakers to slap punitive taxes on bonuses paid to high earners at bailed-out institutions.
Senior executives on both sides of the Atlantic on Friday warned of an exodus of talent from some of the biggest names in US finance, saying the “anti-American” measures smacked of “a McCarthy witch-hunt” that would send the country “back to the stone age”.
There were fears that the backlash triggered by AIG’s payment of $165m in bonuses to executives responsible for losses that forced a $170bn taxpayer-funded rescue would have devastating consequences for the largest banks.
“Finance is one of America’s great industries, and they’re destroying it,” said one banker at a firm that has accepted public money. “This happened out of haste and anger over AIG, but we’re not like AIG.”
The banker added: “It’s like a McCarthy witch-hunt...This is the most profoundly anti- American thing I’ve ever seen.” . . . . .
posted by John Lott at 10:45 AM
1 Comments:
"There were fears that the backlash triggered by AIG’s payment of $165m in bonuses to executives responsible for losses that forced a $170bn taxpayer-funded rescue would have devastating consequences for the largest banks."
There's an appalling double standard. A company janitor who is inept at cleaning will be fired, while the fat cats at the top can wreck the whole company and pay themselves millions in grossly undeserved bonuses just because they can. The shareholders seem to be out to lunch as their money is misspent on rewarding bad management. Where’s the accountability? Maybe it’s in that fearsome backlash against those million dollar monkeys. Perhaps they could work as janitors without being fired for incompetence. Perhaps not.
Post a Comment
<< Home