Gordon Gecko's Back!
"Greed Is Good" is the headline of a story in yesterday's Wall Street Journal , reminding me, of course, of Oliver Stone's wildly successful movie about the biz, Wall Street . "Greed is good," says Gordon Gecko at one point in the movie, but in true Hollywood style, the greedy guy gets sent to jail. In reality, the greedy gents on Wall Street pay themselves bonuses out of federal bailout funds. Roy Smith, a former partner at Goldman Sachs, is the author of the WSJ article. In it, he argues that "bonuses are an important and necessary part of the fast-moving, high-pressure industry, and its employees flourish with strong performance incentives." How I wish bonuses had provided adequate incentive for sustainable profit on Wall Street! And how I wish that these banks had flourished along with the employees! Perhaps if bonuses had been tied to performance, we wouldn't be in such a mess today. I love how when the Wall Street insiders sp...