What does "Geithner was a $500,000-a-year guy." mean? Does that mean he was in their money range club, or is he laughing at Geither, like "HA! our junior associates probably make $500K a year."

Or it is a shot a Geithner for being someone who supported a cap on compensation at $500K/yr?

The players in this article remind me not of Wall Street, but of folks at CAA or IMG. Playing the superagent Jerry Maguire card to rein in fat-cat clients and bragging about who's in the club. The level of smugness seems to have no boundaries with some of these Wall Street-ers.

This puts me in mind of another faux outrage meme heard on the MSM these days: that populist anger is a bad thing - a no-no in Capitalist America. I keep hearing "are the people too angry?" or about how "anger can be dangerous". Frankly, I don't think we've had enough anger from the sheeple! What we've seen so far is the tip of the iceberg.

These bankers seriously don't get it. In a fish doesn't know it's wet way. They're living on another planet. There is so much anger from ordinary get up at 6 every day Americans whose wages have stagnated over the last 30 years while health costs have quadrupled, pensions and 401ks disappeared. The bankers are angry! They don't know what angry is.

You've got your mojo back now give me my damn money back.

Another victory for the oligarchs.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Shorter: We've got our dead cat bouncing again!

Apart from the (ncreasingly common) tabloid-trash style headline and the tone of playful amusement, this collection of quotes doesn't really amount to much more than ...carefully selected collection of quotes.

I think it's entirely possible that perfectly innocent people have been caught in the mess created by others. It happens all the time and most people working for companies may have an example or two.

It's also entirely reasonable that some people would object to the wholesale guilt-tripping (conventiently mis-labled "popular outrage") that people like Josh Marshall ride and gleefully exploit for an ideological purpose.

I read the full NYT op-ed and my take on this was slightly different.

DeSantis doesn't want to be exploited by the politics of the moment - the dramatic headline-generating posturing of Cuomo, the Congressmen foaming at the mouth in the presence of TV cameras despite passing the law that authorized bonuses, by Fox News attacking Democrats, by Geithner and Dodd trying to shift the blame, by Obama running hard to stay ahead of the anger.

All the actors here have such a clear self-serving interest at stake, I find it incredible that nobody points it out.

Obviously, Josh Marshall doesn't give a shit about the fact that he's almost certainly lumping innocent and guilty behind labels like "Wall Street" or "bankers" in order to make his political point - and that's fine.

But by the same token, I see nothing wrong with DeSantis and probably many others refusing to be everybody's punching bag.

Sorry - just don't agree with the theme stated here. The Op-Ed was essentially saying that they had the opportunity to walk away last fall and move on to other companies. They didn't - with the promise that if they helped wind down the company, they would get paid at the end. The bonus had nothing to do with what brought the company down, but was compensation for them staying to clean it up.

The media has turned it into something completely different, tying the bonuses to AIG performance. It wasn't that - and its a shame that Josh and others here put forth that position instead of just saying what it was - a bonus for work done from last fall until the unwinding of these business are complete.

What is lost in all this is the basic economics. Economics 101 is supply and demand. With capital, the supply is the lender and demand is the borrower. After thirty years of supply side economics giving every break possible to the lenders, the borrowers are now broke. So the plan now is to have the taxpayers buy the bad debts from the lenders, in order to give them more money to lend. That doesn't solve the problem of where to invest all this money, other than lending it to the government.
Money doesn't fuel the economy, it lubricates it and those running the financial system have taken it as their God given right to drain as much as they possibly can, into their own pockets. Surprise, surprise, the real economy is now seized up. That's what happens when you take all the oil out of the engine.

So now they want us to give them whatever's left, with the promise that they MIGHT LOAN some of it back!!!!!! Other than that, the only plan is just to print more money. There was a reason capitalism functioned so well for so many years with a progressive taxation policy. Growth is bottom up, not top down and if a lot more doesn't start raining down, not just trickling down, we are all in trouble.
The fact is that modern monetary systems are a tax based public utility and in matter of fact, it all belongs to the government, just like roads, courts, the military, etc. Political power used to be private once. It was called monarchy. The monarchists railed against mob rule, but democracy works by distributing the power as broadly as possible, through various layers of governance. Now we need to do the same with economic power. A public banking system would be as local as possible, attached to every level of government and channeling profits back into local needs. We don't need it to be quite so innovative, we need it to be solid.
If people understood money as a public utility in the first place, we would be less inclined to drain value out of our communities and environment to put in a bank.

This is beyond punching bags. This is class warfare. The banking establishment built their sub-culture by leeching off the lower classes. Now that sub-culture is bankrupt, it was unsustainable and now it's dying. They're going to keep it afloat by sucking more money from the lower classes, without giving anything in return except a promise not to crash the economy completely. It's like a parasite demanding more blood, and promising only not to kill its host.

This op-ed by Jake DeSantis sounds to me like a lamprey claiming, "I don't know why everyone's so mad at me! I sucked more blood than anyone else last year!"

That might get him some appreciation from the parasite leaders. But for us on whom they have been feasting, he is part of the problem, and I see no need to feel sorry now that his parasitic sub-culture is going belly-up.

Agreed with Lalo, Kgb and convict that this is at best a startlingly childish and in some parts dishonest post. There are legitimate criticisms one could level at the DeSantis piece - it's not like the guy is going destitute or anything, and let's face it, no matter how well he did for his company, the company itself is in the crapper and taking the rest of us down with it, so it's not as if we're weeping for the guy - but this post takes the easy sleazy route of mining misguided outrage at bankers and the like. Really a disappointment that Marshall throws his lot in with this crap.

Let's be honest - they're only taking their cue from Obama/Geithner. It's the Obama administration that's acting as if this downturn is only a temporary glitch in an otherwise wonderfully managed economy. Their bank rescue scheme was all about proving to Wall Street that they are able to manage taxpayer dollars better than the government. So why shouldn't Wall Street feel proud of itself? If Obama/Geithner have their way, Wall Street will come out of this with even more power and authority than before.

Have to agree with a few others on how much the coverage is landing in the disappointing column.

I'm trying to imagine one of the tens of thousands of UAW line workers who were told that their companies wouldn't be bailed out unless they agreed to give up a big chunk of their paychecks -- or the retired workers, who were just up and told that their health benefits were on the chopping block -- writing such a miffed letter. And having it published in the New York Times.

Also have to say that the "dollar a year" sanctimony seems a little misplaced when you learn it's a tax dodge and the bonus is contractually guaranteed...

This post is factually incorrect in its key point. It needs to be corrected.

DeSantis is NOT keeping his bonus. He will donate what's left of it after taxes. This is stated quite clearly in his op-ed, and he promises to provide relevant documentation.

Overall, I respect his decision. He has teh right to be treated fairly, just like anybody else. The fact that he has been more successful than most people doesn't change that. It's not like he inherited his wealth.

AIG is insolvent. It is living on the taxpayer dole.

You, Mr. De Santis, are nothing but a Whining Welfare Queen. Not another dime of my tax dollars should you or any of the other Wall Street Welfare Queens get.

First off I would like to be maginalized as only a "500k/year wage-slave."
Good G-d...let me think about for a moment...making "only" 500k a year...wow, what fantasy pay check.

Okay, enough of that.

My problem with this whole thing is that AIG made squat for me. AIG did not make $1 for me, nor did it make $100,000,000,000,000,000,000.00 for me either.
So lets dispense with the whole "boo-fucking-hoo-I-did-this-for-you" bullshit and get to the point: AIG is taking taxpayers money and spending it, and all we, taxpayers, want is accountability...the kind of accountability that says, "where is that money going too?"
And if we don't like how that money is being spent, then sunshine, start talking because we're following the Golden Rule that Wall Street worked with for all these years.
You all know the Golden Rule right?
He who has the Gold makes the Rules...familiar with that one?
Well today, the Taxpayers are saying, "yes, the golden rule is fair play."
So if AIG is saying "fuck you" to me, a Taxpayer, my response is quite simple, and to the point, "You'll eat it, and you'll like it because you got nowhere else to go."

Where is AIG "Spending" our money?

I'll tell you where: They're PAYING OFF those "Investors" who sank money into Credit Default Swaps.

These folks KNEW good and well what they were doing. They "Invest" all the time (just look at their bank accounts for proof). They KNEW these were "RISKY" and they CHOSE to "Invest" - mostly because of the "Risk". The bigger the risk, the bigger the pay-off.

Some of these CDS's pay off at 30:1

So, AIG is getting OUR money and giving it to the "Investors".

THAT's what pisses me off. Not some paulty bonuses.

I suggest that ANY investor who GAMBLED on CDS's and LOST should... well... LOSE!!!

That's the whole point of "Risk", right? Sometimes you win BIG... and sometimes you LOSE.

If they get paid off with our Tax Money, then they effectively took NO RISK!

I cry FOUL!!!

A LARGE part of this problem would simply disappear if those "Investors/Gamblers" were simply told, "Sorry. You Lose."

Done.

I don't understand this whole "no one will be left to run the company" line of bullshit.

If the top dog at any of the Wall Street firms got hit by a beer truck, there would be plenty of others downstream who are ready to step up and take his place.

If the top 10 guys got hit by a beer truck, there would be plenty of others downstream who would gladly step up and seize the opportunity.

If the top 100 guys got hit by a beer truck or decided to tell the firm to take a flying leap, there would be plenty of others downstream who would gladly step up and seize the opportunity.

Eventually, there would be no more men left in the line of succession, and a Wall Street firm might have to turn to a woman to run the firm.

But even that could not be a total catastrophe. Not after what we've already seen.

Nobody would have *EVER* appointed Steve Jobs or Bill Gates in their early scruffy incarnations to run IBM, yet they've both done a much better job than the IBM leaders who were running IBM when they started Apple and Microsoft.

Who's to say there isn't that same kind of talent buried under the dead wood ten levels down the org chart at these Wall Street firms?