Goldman Sachspeak: Income Inequality will lead to Prosperity and Opportunity for All

[marmar]

:wtf:


from thinkprogress:


Goldman Sachs Analyst: Income ‘Inequality’ Will Lead To ‘Prosperity And Opportunity For All’

Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Wall Street banks are on pace to pay out a record $140 billion in compensation this year. “Workers at 23 top investment banks, hedge funds, asset managers and stock and commodities exchanges can expect to earn even more than they did the peak year of 2007,” the Journal found.

The New York-based investment bank Goldman Sachs has “set aside $16.7 billion for compensation and benefits in the first nine months of 2009,” which is a 46 percent increase from last year. But according to a Goldman adviser, Wall Street’s record pay is necessary “to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all”:

A Goldman Sachs International adviser defended compensation in the finance industry as his company plans a near-record year for pay, saying the spending will help boost the economy. “We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all,” Brian Griffiths, who was a special adviser to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, said yesterday at a panel discussion hosted by St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.

At the same time that Wall Street’s pay has skyrocketed, pay cuts in other sectors “are occurring more frequently than at any time since the Great Depression.”

While record bonuses may indeed spur spending on million dollar apartments in New York City, the growth in Wall Street pay — and the growing share of national income that is going to the richest Americans — has not translated into shared prosperity. Consider, “back in 1985, the average annual salary for all workers across the country was actually a bit higher than the average (Wall Street) bonus ($19,000 to $13,970),” but “while the average bonus soared almost 14 times higher (by 2006), the average salary has essentially been stagnant since the mid-1980s.”


Goldman Sachs is able to make its current profits ($3.19 billion last quarter) — and thus pay huge bonuses — because of government programs aimed at reviving the economy, which allow the company to make “big bets using cheap dollars.” As Simon Nixon wrote, the profits “aren’t the due rewards for exceptional skill but gifts from taxpayers.”


http://thinkprogress.org/2009/10/21/goldman-pay/

[sinkingfeeling]

1. We have found the new St. Ronnie!

[bdamomma]

2. opportunity for all???? who the Wall Street crowd?

Greed is a bitch isn't it?

[MisterP]

3. aargh! as early as 1981-82 David Stockman outright confessed that trickle-down was not to help the

economy, but merely to further enrich the rich

he's a Randroid, and believes that the rick must be made ever richer, simply because they're superior, demigod-like people

[pscot]

5. Poke a hole in them

and they'll bleed, just like the rest of us.

[kenfrequed]

4. Feh

Socialism is starting to sound better and better all the time.

[ashling]

6. Thank you!

I am finishing up my professional paper for grad school in government. The topic is inequality and the ways in which it is caustic to democracy and is tearing the social fabric of this country.

This quote is a keeper!

[marmar]

10. If your topic is inequality, here's a website you might like....if you haven't already discovered it

www.toomuchonline.org

[Joe Chi Minh]

7. You have to laugh at their chuzpah. Come back, Milton, all is forgiven.

[fascisthunter]

8. idiot

[ddeclue]

9. BREAKING: French Translation - Let them eat cake!

:argh:

[izzybeans]

11. In other news "War is Peace".

[damntexdem]

12. True: the poor will greatly enjoy the bridge the rich are trying to sell them.

At least until they try to cross it and find that they are persona non grata on the rich side.

;-)

[Toasterlad]

13. How. The Fuck. Can They Get Away With This Shit.

Shouldn't we be fucking storming the Bastille with pitchforks by now?

WHAT THE CHRIST??!?

[Barack_America]

14. Lord Griffiths says we just have to get used to being pissed on.

Serfs that we are.

[ddeclue]

17. Public Relations FAIL:

Here ya go GS:

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

15. Hooray - we'll all soon be CEOs - every last one of us at the same time

No more workers. Nothing but $1 billion annual bonuses for sitting in the corner office. Corner offices for all! It's the American dream!

[Gin]

16. Beam me up Scotty!

[DireStrike]

18. We should go to GS headquarters and ask them for our prosperity, NOW.

We are definitely overdue.