Friday, October 31, 2008

Paying One's Debts

Will the banks that receive part of the $700 billion be allowed to pay their executives the money they owe for past performance? That's the question the Wall Street Journal asks today. The Journal has analyzed financial statements and other filings of the nine major banks who will be bailed out and discovered that the executives of these banks are owed $40 billion in deferred compensation. This money is owed to the people who got the banks in their current position. How can one say that their performance is worthy of any deferred compensation?

I've written about the overpayment of CEOs often and noted that usually the pool of money reserved for executive retirements exceeds that of the pool for the rank and file. For example, Goldman Sachs owes its executives $11.8 billion and its employees $399,000,000. Bank of America's $1.3 billion executive retirement pool reduced the bank's earnings by over $100,000,000 last year; its plan for the rank and file is overfunded and bumped earnings up by $32,000,000.

Will Treasury take action on this 'debt'?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Having a great deal of debt and not knowing how to pay it off can be a large negative stress in your life. You need some way to come to grips with this will financially as well as emotionally so this would be a good outlet if you have nowhere else to turn.