Goldman's Pay Will Be `Dramatically' Hit by Crisis, Palm Says

no bonuses should be paid out at all. if the company needs a bail out to keep afloat then it also needs the money that would have went to bonuses to keep afloat.

i predict if any of the banks that are getting fed money give out any bonus money they will immediately be subject to a NY AG investigation and probably a FED AG investigation as well.

Glad to see these parasites go broke.

These "parasites" foot the bill for state and city budgets:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122653542508722577.html

And that's only income, nevermind real estate and consumption taxes, plus charitable giving. Be careful what you wish for.

oh they "foot the bill??"

you mean that they steal 100's of millions of dollars and pay a few of those stolen millions back to the govt and the people that they stole the money from in the first place?

wah wah wah....

dude your rich pay the lions share of taxes is an old argument that didnt hold water in the past. it also doesnt hold water in the future because you wall street parasites are never going to be able to make "i.e. steal" the type of money that you made in the past.

You should stop whining and start learning how to live on an accountants salary. Your master of the universe days are as gone as you Bear Sterns equity. Douche bag.

"wah wah wah"?

Your_landlord = petrfitz = spunky! Only spunky ever said that!

However, I do have to agree that they overbonused themselves for taking excessive risk. New York (City and State) are like drug addicts with the money. Time for property prices to deflate, government spending to abate.

Too bad they had to take the rest of down with them.

You assume I'm defending the industry. All I ask is that you consider the consequences to our city without an approximate 50% of its anticipated personal income tax revenue.

angler7, it is a necessary correction, after 5 years of obscene bonuses and spending.

angler7, it is a necessary correction, after 5 years of obscene bonuses and spending.

Angler7 - so we go through a few years of a rough patch. Atleast we wont have our entire country pilfered by a few well connected idiots.

other industries and entrepenuers will take the financial parasites place and become the big dogs. they will pay alot of taxes.

Just because we may be in for a bad period doesnt mean we should keep letting the wall street assholes pillage us.

IF you were being continually ass raped by someone, and after they were done they gave you enough money to pay your rent, would you rather to be continually ass raped or would you rather not be ass raped and lose your apartment and adjust?

stevejhx - Agreed. My post was for those dancing on the graves of an industry that, whether we like it or not, is the life-blood of this town. When the music stops and the stark reality of curtailed city services hurts those least able to protect themselves, I hope we can muster a more thoughtful response.

Your-Landlord - Depends on the apartment. :)

Your_Landlord, I would add that the gaming and development industries will collapse as well.

I don't think anybody's dancing (though I've been accused of it!) but this had to happen. Of course had the morons in charge not let Lehman go bankrupt we wouldn't be at Dow below 8,000 again as happened today, nor would we have seen the credit crisis so exacerbated. But that's because - as was seen yesterday - Paulson is like the rest of the current administration: inept. That seems to have been the criterion for selection.

Nonetheless, now that we are aware of the problem we can begin to address it, and point 1 will be re-regulation. There not being any investment banks worth speaking of anymore is a good place to start. But the city and state will have to get used to this new situation, and as the editorial in today's Wall Street Journal says, now that the major banks have an option to move operations to Charlotte (in the case of BofA) or Seattle (in the case of JPM), New York is going to have to look at its tax and expense structure, lest we go through the same problems we did in the 70's.

"Be careful what you wish for."

It will bite everyone where they least can withstand the bite. Gloating is premature.

stevejhx - I am no markets expert, and I know others smarter than me on the subject (including yourself) have fleshed it out, but I don't buy the Lehman as lynch-pin argument. My suspicion is that we'd still be in this mess. The market paused for Bear, AIG, WAMU, TARP, Fed Cut 1,2,3, international intervention, etc., before continuing its inexorable downward spiral. In my opinion, the only difference if Lehman was bailed out would be the taxpayers footing a larger bill. In a culture of fear, people will grasp any excuse to rationalize their panic.

Let's hope the '70s remain the stuff of movies and pop culture.

We'd still be in a problem, but not this bad. Take a look at what happened to credit the day after Lehman went bankrupt, September 17. And the stock market. And the economy.

Not only in the US, but the world.

It was a tipping point - banks stopped lending because there was no certainty of who was going to be saved and who wasn't. It was a huge policy blunder, and it caused what Best Buy announced yesterday: there has never been such a quick and radical shift in consumer behavior in its 41 year history. It's like everything stopped.

Perhaps. I see Lehman as a tipping point that may have accelerated the decline, yes, but the credit markets were already seizing. Lehman was an exclamation point, not the exclamation.

We'll have to disagree there. There are orderly unwinds and then there are systemic risks. This could have been done orderly.

Fair enough.

bjw - the only industry that has raped and pillage americans more than Wall Street is the health insurance "indsutry".

Can you look at yourself in the mirror each morning and feel good that your living comes from bankrupting those in need of health care?

Oh yeah gaming may collapse - i.e. EA etc, but childrens educational software will be the last to go.

Your_Landlord, are you no longer hiding the fact that you're petrfitz? You should probably be aware that not all healthcare companies are "bankrupting" those in need, but I don't really expect you to see things that aren't black and white.