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This month the biggest Wall Street companies reported their quarterly earnings. JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs reported bumper earnings, Citgroup and Bank of America, not so good. But if you leave out write downs on debt, everyone had a great quarter in their capital markets businesses. Billions have been budgeted for year end bonuses.

As could be expected, the issue of Wall Street compensation raised its head again. And this time there is the weight of the federal government behind it. Banks that have taken TARP money will see their executive compensation capped. And the Federal Reserve has suggested that all large banks that fall under its jurisdiction will be reviewed on on going basis to ensure that executive bonuses do not produce risk taking behavior that could put the banking system at risk.

There are several memes that get mixed up in any discussion about Wall Street compensation in the media. Add a lot of emotion from a distraught public and it becomes for a tangled mess where the media feeds the furore but there’s no real understanding of the underlying issues. Let’s see if we can parse the issues out.

These are the issues as they are played out in the media
- Issue #1 – The taxpayer bailed out Wall Street. How can they pay themselves these kinds of bonuses.
- Issue #2 – The rest of the country is going through agonizing pain – high unemployment, pay freezes and cuts – how can these people pay themselves what they do?
- Issue #3 – Their companies have been (and some still are) hemorrhaging cash. How can they pay their investment bankers so much?

I don’t think any of these issues merit any attention from lawmakers. #1 could be argued many ways but at the end of the day, if the bank has taken TARP money and hasn’t yet returned it, the federal government as shareholder with special rights, can do as it pleases. Politics dictates that compensation should be curbed and so it will be. #2 amounts to appealing to a cold corporation’s heart – a futile endeavor. #3 is the company’s call. They have a board and shareholders. If they think that they need to pay top dollar to retain talent, then that’s what they need to do.

In my mind there are two fundamental issues that need consideration. One, is related to risk increasing compensation practices. The second is a larger issue of high, untrammeled growth in the capital markets in the last two decades.

On the first issue, everyone agrees that Wall Street’s bonus bonanzas encourage traders and management to pile on the risk, collect their super size bonuses and when things turn south, leave the shareholders to pick up the pieces. And when things go really really bad, like what happened to the markets last year, let the federal government foot the bill.

What is not clear to me is why the shareholders just stand there and let this happen. The expectation that the bank is too big to fail and that the fed will bail you out, doesn’t explain it. If you were a shareholder in Citigroup and held the stock prior to the crash, even though you were bailed out, you probably lost your shirt on Citi.

I am not sure what the answer to this is. It could be that in the normal course of things, shareholders don’t really exert any influence on the board of the company. Election of board members and votes on CEO compensation, need to see a lot more vigor in the shareholder meetings, especially in the US.

Or it could be that shareholders think they’re smart and will be able to get out before the stuff hits the fan – a variant of what the trader or management thinks – except that the employee just loses her job, the shareholder his savings.

It could be that there isn’t enough disclosure. That Wall Street companies, on the pretext of not revealing proprietary information on trades and investments, is actually throwing a cloak on dodgy, heads-I-win-tails-you-lose schemes.

There could be other things going on that only behavioral economics can explain. Thinking that if everyone has been doing risky trades for so long then maybe its not that risky, is both irrational and perfectly natural.

Whatever, the reason behind it, this nexus between risk and compensation needs to be tackled head on. It is going to be a very tough problem. But not addressing it is not the answer.

The other question is also a big one. In the last two decades, the capital markets have grown much faster than the rest of the economy. The chart here shows that the profits in the US Financial sector went from about 15% of total corporate profits in 1998 to over 40% in 2007. When an industry grows at that pace, the competitive intensity is low and margins are high. The use of technology raises productivity further increasing margins. In the capital markets the only significant cost is the cost of people. When there is no or low downward pressure on prices, compensation has no place to go but up.

But is the ‘natural’ size of the industry as a share of GDP what it is today or what it was two decades ago? Can an industry that essentially allocates capital, and doesn’t really make anything, have such a large share of the GDP? Is there something in the laws of the land that make it so? For instance the credit rating industry, many say, is a creation of legislation and would not have existed at least in this twisted model of today, had it not been for an easy regulatory environment. Are there other such areas that would wilt in the face of an openly competitive field or lower entry barriers?

I don’t know the answers to these questions. But I do know that if the world has a problem with Wall Street traders, bankers and CEOs making tens of millions a year, not just in today’s recession, but beyond as well, we will need to look at taming the industry, not capping salaries. If that’s even possible at all.

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Wall Street is about to learn an overdue lesson in humility.

A year removed from the global economic crisis they created, executives of the financial companies responsible have yet to disassociate themselves of the notion they deserve the obscene sums they pay themselves.

Do they make anything of value?
Do they contribute anything tangible to society?

Do they heal the sick or comfort the afflicted?

The answers, of course, are no, no and no. They simply move money from one place to another and take a cut. Yet even after being bailed out by U.S. taxpayers who will shoulder the bill for years to come, the delusional titans of Citigroup, Bank of America, AIG and their brethren believed they were still deserving of stipends that would make a king blush.

No more.

On Wednesday, a frustrated Obama administration indicated it will cap pay to the chief executives of companies the Treasury rescued last year.

According to the New York Times, details of the plan will be divulged over the next few days, but the seven companies that received the most TARP money will have to learn to live much more modestly. The 25 best-paid executives, the Times said, will be paid up to 90 percent less than last year. In fact, no top executive will receive more than $200,000 in total compensation.

It's about time.

But, as the infomercials say, there's more.

Any executive who wants more than $25,000 in special benefits -- think country clubs, private planes and limousines -- first will have to get government permission.

Obviously, Wall Street failed to understand Americans had had enough.

While the bankers who hatched the financial shenanigans in lower Manhattan continued to pocket paychecks in the tens of millions, ordinary Americans bailing them out were being handed pink slips as a consequence of the economic train wreck.

Yes, the bailout was necessary. Without it, the economy would have buckled. Unfortunately, it came with too little oversight. Even as they took billions in TARP money, executives whined that their substantial payment packages were necessary to keep them in their plush offices. Bewildered Americans asked why, but the Bush administration acquiesced.

Now, a year later, those who thought they were too big to fail are going to have to answer to those who were too small to save.

Pissed off and pitchforked

Geithner Aides Reaped Millions Working for Banks, Hedge Funds


By Robert Schmidt

Oct. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Some of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s closest aides, none of whom faced Senate confirmation, earned millions of dollars a year working for Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Citigroup Inc. and other Wall Street firms, according to financial disclosure forms.

The advisers include Gene Sperling, who last year took in $887,727 from Goldman Sachs and $158,000 for speeches mostly to financial companies, including the firm run by accused Ponzi scheme mastermind R. Allen Stanford. Another top aide, Lee Sachs, reported more than $3 million in salary and partnership income from Mariner Investment Group, a New York hedge fund.

As part of Geithner’s kitchen cabinet, Sperling and Sachs wield influence behind the scenes at the Treasury Department, where they help oversee the $700 billion banking rescue and craft executive pay rules and the revamp of financial regulations. Yet they haven’t faced the public scrutiny given to Senate-confirmed appointees, nor are they compelled to testify in Congress to defend or explain the Treasury’s policies.

“These people are incredibly smart, they’re incredibly talented and they bring knowledge,” said Bill Brown, a visiting professor at Duke University School of Law and former managing director at Morgan Stanley. “The risk is they will further exacerbate the problem of our regulators identifying with Wall Street.”

While it isn’t unusual for Treasury officials to come from the financial industry, President Barack Obama has been critical of Wall Street, blaming its high-risk, high-pay culture for helping cause the financial-market meltdown.

‘Reckless Behavior’

Speaking to financial executives last month, Obama said: “We will not go back to the days of reckless behavior and unchecked excess that was at the heart of this crisis, where too many were motivated only by the appetite for quick kills and bloated bonuses.”

At the same time, the president has promised to change Washington by keeping lobbyists for special interests at a distance and by making decisions in the open.

Sperling and Sachs are each paid $162,900 at the Treasury. Along with four others, they hold the title of counselor to Geithner. Sachs, 46, withdrew earlier this year from consideration to be the Treasury’s top domestic finance official, a job that would have required Senate confirmation.

Geithner’s predecessor, Henry Paulson, brought on a coterie of non-confirmed advisers from Goldman Sachs at the end of his term. Paulson, who had been the firm’s chief executive officer, defended the arrangement as necessary to quickly bring in top talent when the financial system was on the verge of collapse.

Awaiting Confirmation

The title of counselor had been generally reserved for those awaiting confirmation. Some of Geithner’s aides now work in that capacity, including Lael Brainard, who has been nominated to be undersecretary for international affairs, and Jeffrey Goldstein, the nominee to be undersecretary for domestic finance.

“The use of counselors provides an opportunity to bring valuable expertise into the department to serve in a close capacity with the secretary,” said Rob Nichols, a former Treasury official under Secretaries Paul O’Neill and John Snow, neither of whom relied extensively on unconfirmed aides. “It’s important that they complement, but don’t supplant, the Senate confirmed appointments.”

The use of unconfirmed counselors can cut both ways. It allows Geithner to bring in staff quickly by avoiding the arduous confirmation process. On the other hand, the aides don’t get as tough a vetting by the White House or Congress and remain less accountable than Senate-confirmed officials.

Understanding Markets

Treasury spokesman Andrew Williams said the department needs people with a deep understanding of markets and the financial system, especially as it works to fend off the worst recession in half a century.

“The secretary thought that the best way to utilize their talents was to allow these individuals to provide advice to the secretary on policy issues through appointments as counselor,” Williams said.

All of Geithner’s counselors are subject to federal ethics rules, including a pledge to avoid contact with their former firms for at least a year, Williams added.

Most officials at the Treasury who have been approved by Congress come from academic, legal or non-Wall Street backgrounds. For example, Geithner’s deputy, Neal Wolin, was president and chief operating officer for property and casualty operations at insurer Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. in Hartford, Connecticut. Michael Barr, the assistant secretary for financial institutions, was a professor at the University of Michigan Law School.

Merrill Lynch Executive

An exception is Herb Allison, who runs the office that administers the financial rescue. He had been chief executive officer of mortgage finance company Fannie Mae and retirement- services firm TIAA-CREF, and before that was a longtime executive at Merrill Lynch & Co. in New York.

Along with Sperling and Sachs, Geithner’s inner circle also includes counselor Lewis Alexander, the former chief economist at Citigroup; Chief of Staff Mark Patterson, who was a lobbyist at Goldman Sachs, and Matthew Kabaker, a deputy assistant secretary who worked at private equity firm Blackstone Group LP. Patterson’s and Kabaker’s jobs did not require confirmation.

One counselor who doesn’t have a finance background is Jake Siewert, a press secretary for President Bill Clinton who came to the Treasury after working as a vice president at New York- based Alcoa Inc., the largest U.S. aluminum producer.

Alexander, who left Citigroup in March to join the Treasury, was paid $2.4 million in 2008 and the first few months of 2009, according to his financial-disclosure form. He advises Geithner on economic trends and does research on financial markets.

Toxic Assets

Kabaker, who works on domestic finance policy and helped craft the Treasury plan to spur banks to sell their toxic assets, earned $5.8 million working on private equity deals at Blackstone in 2008 and 2009 before joining the Treasury at the end of January, his disclosure form shows. Much of the compensation was in stock that Kabaker, who worked at Blackstone for 10 years, was awarded when it went public in 2007.

On his disclosure, Sachs estimated that he would receive $3.4 million in income from Mariner. The precise figure was not given because the books hadn’t closed on a number of partnerships when he joined the department in January. As of Feb. 23, when he signed the document, Sachs said he was also owed a 2008 bonus where the value was “not ascertainable.”

Sachs’s former firm also had agreed to repurchase his shares in Mariner Partners Inc., an investment fund. Sachs estimated his income from the fund at $1 million to $5 million. Sachs, who declined to comment, also specializes in domestic finance.

Work on Education

In Sperling’s primary job, he was paid $116,653 by the Council on Foreign Relations for work related to education in developing countries.

Sperling’s disclosure shows he supplemented his salary through a variety of consulting jobs, board seats, speaking fees and fellowships, to bring his total income to more than $2.2 million in the 13 months ending in January.

He was paid $480,051 as a director of the Philadelphia Stock Exchange and $250,000 for providing quarterly economic briefings to two hedge fund firms, Brevan Howard Asset Management LLP and Sterling Stamos Capital Management.

Sperling spoke at a Washington event hosted by the Houston- based Stanford Group Co. in November 2008, three months before its chairman was sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly bilking investors of $7 billion. He also spoke at a Washington event in October 2007 that was sponsored by Citigroup, which has received $45 billion in government assistance.

Paid Speeches

Sperling, 50, was paid for his speeches through the Harry Walker Agency, which books speakers. His disclosure form does not list how much he was paid for each speech.

Sperling also drew a $137,500 salary from Bloomberg News for writing a monthly column and appearing on television, according to his disclosure.

Goldman Sachs paid Sperling the $887,727 for advice on its charitable giving. That made the bank his highest-paying employer. Even Geithner’s chief of staff Patterson, who was a full-time lobbyist at the firm, did not make as much as Sperling did on a part-time basis. Patterson reported earning $637,492 from Goldman Sachs last year.

“My sole work for Goldman Sachs was as lead consultant on the creation, design, and initial implementation of ‘10,000 Women,’ their $100 million philanthropic effort to give business and leadership education to poor women around the world,” Sperling said.

His total income of $2.2 million was unusually high, Sperling added.

The Wall Street ties are troubling to some advocates for investors. “Where is the transparency this administration promised?” asked Lynn Turner, a former chief accountant at the SEC. “You just wonder, who is representing middle Americans?”