As justified as it is to scream at Wall Streeters making
stupid amounts of money, be honest with yourself: Most of us
would quickly loosen our moral values if an eight-figure
income were dangled in our face.
If someone came to me and said, "Morgan, securitize these
subprime mortgages, and we'll give you $10 million a year,"
guess what? I'd probably do it. You probably would, too.
Whether that's morally right doesn't supersede the fact that
money is probably the single most powerful tool for
influencing behavior.
The outrage over Wall Street pay, then, shouldn't be
directed at those receiving it so much as at those
authorizing and enabling it.
That's why plenty of us here at the Fool nodded our heads
in agreement when we heard Nell Minow, chairwoman of the
Corporate Library, say this in
The New Yorkerabout bonus bonanzas:
It drives me absolutely batty that you will not see, in
any of the news stories about these bonuses, the names of
the compensation-committee members who approved them. Is
there any other story in journalism where you don't get the
who? Isn't that one of the seven things you're supposed to
have in any story,Â
who did it?
You can say, 'A.I.G. paid the bonuses.' Excuse me, it's
the compensation committee who authorized and paid the
bonuses. And I'll be happy to give
you their names.
We'd be happy to, too, Nell. And in fact, we will:
Company
Compensation Committee
AIG (NYSE: AIG)
Dennis D. Dammerman
Harvey GolubÂ
Laurette T. KoellnerÂ
Suzanne Nora Johnson
Bank of America (NYSE: BAC)
William P. Boardman
Donald E. Powell
Thomas M. Ryan
Robert W. Scully
Citigroup (NYSE: C)
C. Michael Armstrong
Alain J.P. Belda
Anne Mulcahy
Richard D. Parsons
William S. Thompson, Jr.
Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS)
John H. Bryan
Claes Dahlback
Stephen Friedman
William W. George
Rajat K. Gupta
James A. Johnson Continued... |