Top 10 ways to spend a Goldman Sachs bonus
Goldman Sachs' bonus pool was announced Thursday, with an average payout of $500,000. After taxes, what could that buy?Besides chest-thumping fourth-quarter earnings, Goldman Sachs also announced its bonus pool on Thursday. At $16.2 billion, the total is 20 percent lower than the firm's 2007 level but still amounts to an average of just under $500,000 per employee.
If you're picky, it's only $498,000. Since it's an average, a few people will rake in a lot, lot more and most Goldman employees will make less than half a million. Federal taxes will whittle that down to about $324,000. So what does that get you these days?
Here are our Top 10 things to buy with an average Goldman's bonus:
10. 3,240 homes in Detroit
Homes are being auctioned off by the local section of Housing and Urban Development for as low as $50, but call it an even $100 per house. You'd buy some goodwill as well as a few real fixer-uppers through this purchase. Coupled with a potential tax incentive for refurbishing homes with green appliances and other energy-saving improvements, you could make a tidy profit – and be well on your way to your own private housing bubble.
9. Four years at Harvard Business School
You already know how business really works. Now spend a few years learning how it's supposed to work. Harvard currently pegs the total cost of attendance at $76,600 per year, you and a friend could each take a trip through with $18,000 left over for an awesome spring break adventure. [Editor's note: This section was adjusted to reflect the length of the MBA curriculum.]
8. Five trips around the world
An around-the-world plane ticket to 29 destinations would cost a high-end estimate of $10,000, according to AirTreks.com. Setting aside $50,000 or so to make sure you're not having to crash in youth hostels, you could outdo Magellan.
7. 40 cars
Forget Bentleys, Beamers and Benzs. It's the Tata Nano that's hot. The Indian company says it will introduce the car in the US and the European Union in the near future at around $8,000. Your bonus could have you driving a different one every day of the month, with a few spares in case you prefer driving to dinner in a brand-new car.
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Try to read the whole letter...I believe Goldman et al are rogue elements...see pages 8 and 9.
ReplyDeleteGMO Stop the Presses! Deep Thoughts From Jeremy Grantham
Everyone in Congress, and anywhere else for that matter, knows prop
desk trading (banks trading their own capital like a hedge fund) is a
conflict of interest. They may or may not think it important or that
it caused this or that problem, but they know it’s a real conflict.
Congressmen, since when wasn’t conflict of interest and poor ethical
standards reason enough to change the law? But since we bring it up,
of course prop trading was indeed the rot at the heart of our
financial problems (see last quarter’s Letter). Watching traders take
home their $28 million bonus sent a powerful message to lowly salesmen
and packagers of asset-backed securities, for example, to get out
there and really take some risk. This rot spread to the very top, and
pretty soon chairmen of boards were exhorting CEOs to leverage up and
look more like some much more profitable rival that resembled a hedge
fund rather than an investment bank. Thus encouraged – or intimidated
– some CEOs just kept on dancing right off the cliff. Let’s
learn from our near disaster. Viva Volcker!
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/stop-presses-deep-thoughts-jeremy-grantham?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zerohedge%2Ffeed+%28zero+hedge+-+on+a+long+enough+timeline%2C+the+survival+rate+for+everyone+drops+to+zero%29
Don't let them keep collecting their vig....
ReplyDeleteFight Back
If they are "too big to fail" let's help them get smaller and make our national banking system healthier...
If you are tired of the Wall Street bankster bailout program at taxpayers expense but feel helpless to do anything about it then keep reading. If record profits for the big six banks (and big bonuses for the executives there) that took your tax dollars makes you wonder exactly who is in charge then read on. If you get upset about the Goldman Sachs executive retirement plan (become US Treasury Sec and cash out lifetime personal portfolio tax free AND help out your old pals on Wall Street) for Wall Street banksters then get ready to fight back.
http://www.321gold.com/editorials/laborde/laborde012610.html