>>>>Their motto may as well have been Greed Is Good.
>>
>>Greed isn't good?
>
>For most of us, no. I have no problem with the highly talented making lots of money. Some here (rhymes with Marcia) have come right out and said I resent anyone who is successful. That is not true. What I do resent, in spades, is organizations and people who systemically reap benefits far beyond their contribution. When I see stories about compensation at TARP institutions still averaging $450K a year, while getting notices in the mail saying my credit card interest rate is being jacked up 6%, my blood boils.

I see no problem when private investment banks (those who have direct majority shareholders not those publicly traded!)
share bonuses. If bank have 5 shareholders in total, and those shareholders meet and decide to award sucessfull fund managers
that is fine, because it is owners that decided doing so.

Problem is when publicly traded investment bank execs gets multi million bonuses that should be normally declared as profit and given back to shareholders. If bank disperse bonus worth 1b, but then declare only 250m profit and all this is happening
against shareholders will, then that is IMO very big problem.
To make matters worst, when they make profit they get outrageous bonuses, but if they overdo in bond bussines and get into trouble,
they get - bailout!

This makes them not any better then those large state companies in old Soviet Union and eastern block
(that all colapsed eventually). It simply goes against very grain of market economy. In other words they get to 'privatise' profits
while when they are in trouble, they simply 'socialise' losses. ( & mind you, this is not happening in Europe! {g} )

Are they sucessfull ? Well, some people consider Ronald Biggs sucessfull as well :))