Billions in bonuses for Wall Street execs; mayor denounces “selfish” transit workers

But Bloomberg wasn’t speaking just for himself. The transit strike was viewed as a virtual slave rebellion by New York’s entire financial elite, which has been enriching itself beyond imagination for the last quarter century.

For transit workers, already struggling to make ends meet in one of the costliest cities in world, this Christmas will be a toned down affair, particularly with the threat of heavy fines hanging over their heads, including the loss of two days pay for every day on strike. For Wall Street executives, however, this will be a very merry Christmas.

December is the month for year-end bonuses for Wall Street’s traders, brokers and investment bankers and this year the top layers are expected to pocket some $17 billion in incentive payouts. According to Johnson Associates Inc., a compensation consulting firm, the average bonus for a managing director will be $1.2 million, with top investment bankers and prime brokers seeing checks padded by as much as 20 percent more than 2004’s bonuses. Specialists in energy markets, hedge funds and proprietary trading will likely earn even more.

According New York magazine, Goldman Sachs has put aside $11 billion for bonuses. With 22,000 employees worldwide, that would amount to $500,000 a piece. But not everyone makes the same. Goldman’s top officials—250 partner managing directors—get an average bonus of $2 million to start. Top producers can expect incentive awards of up to $40 million. The next tier of management—executive managing directors—can ring in 2006 with bonuses of up to $3 million.

After the Enron and other corporate scandals there was a certain media and legal attention paid to the massive payoffs on Wall Street. As the scrutiny of such excesses has all but disappeared, so has any reticence over grabbing as much as possible.

“People have had enough of listening to bad news,” said Glenn Mazzella of World Wide Yacht Corporation. “They want to go yachting, and they want to go skiing and they want to drive a Maybach (a German car that retails for $325,000). They’re tired of feeling embarrassed.”

“There’s someone on Wall Street that’s taking 20 of his closest buddies for his bachelor party, renting a yacht, cruising the Caribbean and ending up in Sandy Lane in Barbados on the golf course,” says Tatiana Bryon, president of the New York event planner 4PM Events. The cost: $200,000.

More
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/dec2005/xmas-d23.shtml