So I was doing my standard web surfing this AM after I had checked the (non-existent) jobs listings when I saw this from Bloomberg with the title, “Half of Wall Street Employees Expect Bigger Bonuses”:

Almost half of Wall Street employees expect their year-end bonuses to be higher this year than they were a year ago, according to an eFinancialCareers.com survey.

Of the 911 U.S. financial professionals who responded to the e-mailed survey, 48 percent anticipate a higher payout, up from 41 percent in a similar survey last year, the job-search website said today in a statement. Employees of hedge funds and other asset managers were more optimistic than those at banks and broker-dealers, according the statement. Of the respondents, 82 percent work for U.S.-based companies.

Well imagine my surprise this afternoon when I see this one from Bloomberg titled “Wall Street Bonus Pool Seen Shrinking for Second Straight Year”:

Wall Street’s cash bonus pool is likely to fall for a second straight year as the financial industry grapples with market turmoil, economic weakness and new rules, New York state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said.

Revenue and compensation trends have “edged downward” since February, when DiNapoli estimated that the 2011 pool for Wall Street declined by 13.5 percent to $19.7 billion, the comptroller said today in a report.

The New York Times presented it this way this afternoon:

It still pays to be on Wall Street.

Even as the financial industry in New York has slashed jobs by the thousands, the average worker who remains is collecting a near-record paycheck.

In a report released on Tuesday, the New York State Comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli, said that the average pay package of securities industry employees grew slightly last year and was up 16.6 percent over the past two years, to $362,950. Wall Street’s total compensation rose 4 percent last year to more than $60 billion.

CNBC appears to be trying to split the differences with this report titled “Wall Street Expects Bigger Bonuses But May Not Get Them” as they report on the same survey that Bloomberg covered in the first link:

Revenue is down on Wall Street but expectations for bonuses are up — at least for some workers who have seen their pay shrink since the financial crisis explosion.

A survey from eFinancial Careers shows 48 percent of workers on the Street are looking for higher bonuses than 2011. Expectations are high even as investment banking revenue is down 11 percent for the same period last year while the securities industry overall saw revenue fall 7 percent in the first half.

At the same time, some of the larger firms have been doing better as the headwinds from the European debt crisis subside and hopes grow that the industry will close the year out strongly.

Meanwhile as Wall Street whines its way along, our (not-so-favorite) Masters of the Universe, Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon are once again daring to spout their nonsense. Jon Walker at FDL Action presents this:

What I find most ironic about these CEO deficit hawks complaining about the “uncertainty” that is hurting the economy is that they are the ones responsible for helping to create said uncertainty to begin with. The deficit obsession created the uncertainty about raising the debt ceiling. Similarly, they constantly pushed for a big deficit deal resulting in the creation of the sequesters, which are seen as a big source of the fiscal uncertainty at the moment. The main “uncertainty” about government policy right now is how the government will clean up the mess created by past efforts to force a deficit deal.

But hey, MotU never have to be accountable for destroying the economy. After all, they deserve those millions dollars of bonuses right? Destroying the global economy is hard ass work so they must be compensated for it.

Meanwhile, CNN actually touches base with the real world with this article on part time jobs being the new normal in employment. Notice how much attention is paid to the ravings of Blankfein and Dimon and the Wall St WATB versus the attention paid to the rest of us in the real world?

And because I can:
Happy Birthday John. RIP

Cross posted from Just A Small Town Country Boy by Richard Taylor

A few months ago, I offered my services — only half facetiously — to British Petroleum as CEO after I had read about and watched bits of Tony Hayward’s testimony before Congress. He’d acted like the Sergeant Schultz character (I know nothing, nothing!) on the old sitcom Hogan’s Heroes; I figured I could do at least as good a job as Hayward for a lot less money. Win-win all the way around for everyone!

The Sergeant Schultz defense seems to be fairly common among CEOs and upper management for many companies, even though they are paid to be aware of what is going on. I would imagine that there are many of us among the millions of long term un and underemployed who could do the jobs of CEOs and so-called Masters of the Universe and be not only more honest in our dealings with others but also more empathetic for those who are struggling.

Instead, we get to see Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein’s salary and other compensation jump again in 2010:

The firm’s board granted restricted stock valued at $12.6 million to Mr. Blankfein and other senior executives, including Gary D. Cohn, the firm’s president. The board also approved a new annual base salary of $2 million for its chief executive, up from $600,000. Mr. Cohn and others will see their base salaries increase to $1.85 million, according to the filing on Friday.

With his previous salary of $600,000, Mr. Blankfein’s 2010 compensation comes to $13.2 million. Senior executives often receive part of their compensation in cash, but Goldman did not release details on this component of Mr. Blankfein’s compensation.

Surprisingly, this does not sit well with all corners of the business world. This is from a Fortune Mag (via CNN blog):

How might you compensate management for a year in which profits plunged, you spent $550 million of shareholder money to settle a fraud investigation and your stock ended up more or less exactly where it started (see chart, right)?

You might be tempted to nix raises or withhold bonuses to send a responsible message about linking pay to performance. But if so, you wouldn’t be Goldman Sachs (GS).

It just had the year described above – and responded by tripling everyone’s base salary while boosting bonuses by 40%. Is this a great country or what?

Turns out, Bank of America is doing similar and is also not winning fans for doing so (via Wall Street Journal):

Bank of America Corp. intends to give some investment bankers a greater share of their bonuses in cash, the latest Wall Street compensation move roiling banking chieftains as they meet in Davos, Switzerland.

Last year the highest-paid bankers at the nation’s largest bank by assets received as little as 5% of their payout in cash. Now bankers and traders making more than $5 million are getting as much as 30% of their 2010 compensation in cash and at least 70% in deferred stock, according to people familiar with the situation. Some could see a stock award of as much as 80% and 20% in cash.

Of course, the bankers love to send mixed messages. Read the rest of this entry →

Well, well, well.

It seems that Lloyd Blankfein and the folks at the Vampire Squid think Sen Levin and the staff of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations "cherry-picked" the emails that were released yesterday. From today’s New York Times:

In the messages, Lloyd C. Blankfein, the bank’s chief executive, acknowledged in November 2007 that the firm had lost money initially. But it later recovered by making negative bets, known as short positions, to profit as housing prices plummeted. “Of course we didn’t dodge the mortgage mess,” he wrote. “We lost money, then made more than we lost because of shorts.”

Goldman, of course, denies they made the profit:

Goldman on Saturday denied it made a significant profit on mortgage-related products in 2007 and 2008. It said the subcommittee had “cherry-picked” e-mail messages from the nearly 20 million pages of documents it provided. This sets up a showdown between the Senate subcommittee and Goldman, which has aggressively defended itself since the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a security fraud complaint against it nine days ago. On Tuesday, seven current and former Goldman employees, including Mr. Blankfein, are expected to testify at a Congressional hearing.

My absolute first thought when I saw the "cherry-picking" complaint was of Richard Nixon and the Watergate Tapes. I am not a lawyer and as always, just might be an idiot but it sure looks to me that Sen Levin and staff found what can be very close to the "smoking gun."

But I’m willing to give Mr Blankfein and the rest of the Vampire Squid folks the benefit of the doubt. They claim that Sen Levin and staff released

just four e-mails from the almost 20 million pages of documents and e- mails provided to it by Goldman Sachs,” van Praag said. “It is concerning that the subcommittee seems to have reached its conclusion even before holding a hearing.”

So tell ya what we can do there Goldman Sachs folks. Why don’t you go ahead and release all 20 million pages of documents and emails and let those of us who are interested do some crowdsourcing review for everyone. Surely this would be satisfactory for all parties, right?

No. I’m not going to hold my breath on this to happen.

And because I can: