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Implicit minimum bonus? (to use an expression that Basab Pradhan acknowledges if not defends) Huh, that sounds like a boy thing. Mine’s bigger than yours sort of `entitlement’…Why do CEOs need extravagant perks even when they are firing staff and pleading for taxpayer bailouts? Can it be shrugged off as weird DNA makeup?
It takes arrogance and narcissism to become leader of a Fortune 500 company. Those same traits, however, have become their undoing during the deepest recession in decades.
How about the `ticket items’ mortgages, kids’ schools etc. of the staff that get fired by the dour suits that mess up business strategies? I think their sense of `entitlements’ should be perched a few notches higher because they likely don’t have much `retained earnings’ (excesses of yesteryears) to fall back on while they sit at home after having lost their jobs.
And then, why not Implicit Minimum Return for investors? How many C-level executives will brave that diligence?
That’s a tangent the Wall Street “High Performers” never recognize. It suits them not to. It kind of gets wired into their DNA. But you can never blame the suits’ instincts alone for being so haughty. When they arrive at that position, they have all kinds of toadies toasting them what geniuses they are, and then of course they begin to feel their lifelong feelings of self-importance have been confirmed. There begins the grand ride of delusion, taking credit for pure serendipity (or ancestral good karma) driven good years propelled by overall good sentiment, supported by acquiescent or similarly deluding credit rating agencies stamping away `AAA’ even on toilet paper coming out of a certain Bear Stearns masking their near absent appraisal criteria and redundant evaluation metrics.
For such muck up, the Wall Street suits express no sense of remorse to the investors/other stakeholders they wronged but have the gumption to stand up and claim Implicit Minimum Bonus. Well the show can go on until some day soon a bunch of harried bondholders will suddenly get physically generous and allow their thighs to be used as ear muffs for the Wall Street bonus claimant.