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End Bonuses For Bankers
theodp writes "NYU risk engineering prof Nassim Nicholas Taleb has a suggestion that won't sit too well with the banksters. In his NY Times op-ed, Taleb writes: 'I have a solution for the problem of bankers who take risks that threaten the general public: Eliminate bonuses.' The problem with the bonus system, Taleb explains, is that it provides an incentive to take risks: 'The asymmetric nature of the bonus (an incentive for success without a corresponding disincentive for failure) causes hidden risks to accumulate in the financial system and become a catalyst for disaster. This violates the fundamental rules of capitalism; Adam Smith himself was wary of the effect of limiting liability, a bedrock principle of the modern corporation.'"
bankers will still upset the market on purpose for bribes, much like how politicians lie to (and upset) voters because of what amounts to bribery....
This isn't a solution until he first figures out how to get this by the politicians that said bankers have bought with said money.
"why didn't anyone think of this before" things.
After all, banking isn't really an "industry" in the sense that the word is used in relation to other industries. What does the banking "industry" produce? Money? (In the form of deposits when they make loans?)
How do you increase productivity? More loans per bank employee?
Ideally, banking is supposed to be a support process, not a growth industry in itself. So, yeah, it seems to make sense not to give bonuses to bankers.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
How about if a corporation is awarded death penalty, all its assets would be sold,the proceeds will be distributed to the shareholders, the corporations name, ticker symbols and other trade marks will be sequestered for ever?
It is far too easy to create corporations, compared to real human beings. Corporations do not require visa/green card/work permit/citizenship to work and profit inside the USA. So we can apply the lower standard of "preponderance evidence" to award death penalty to them, not the stricter "beyond reasonable doubt".
Any corporation that is too big to fail, is too dangerous to exist. They should be executed. We bailed out the financial institutions. They technically are living due to our mercy.
Let us break up any bank that has more than 10% market share in retail banking. Any investment bank that has more than 10% market share. And reinstate Glass-Stegall act. Let us do it peacefully when we still can do it in an orderly manner. Else someday roving mobs will be pulling out chairman of Goldman Sachs hiding in sewer pipes.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
This is a fundamental property of capitalism: when a corporation gets lucky it can dominate the market so strongly that when it gets unlucky it gets bailed out by the tax payers.
Do surgeons get paid "bonuses" for successful surgeries?
The incentive for success should be "continue to draw a paycheck, perhaps get a raise/promotion, and not get fired." That's what it is for most of the rest of us.
This changed when firms went public and came to be run by employees rather than partners, with the usual issues of agency, of which asymmetrical incentives are high on the list.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
no, that's a property of a failing political system/class. Bail outs are not an automatic thing. They require the complicity of politicians and the complacency of voters.
It's not a property of capitalism. It's a property of cronyism. I'm so sick of anti-capitalists and their Che Guevera T-shirts. What do you think the guy you bought that shirt from is?
Government bailing out corporations? That's definitely not a free-market principle, and we'd all benefit if such ridiculous falsehoods weren't spouted off by every junior blogger. Whether you like capitalism or not, in a pure system a failed company fails and whatever assets it has go to its creditors.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Instead of taking away wealth creation from the companies that succeed, why not punish those who fail by not bailing them out? Your business fails you go out of business, pretty simple process actually.
Too big to fail is a big fat lie.
The issue is that you're "punishing" the fictional person, rather than the actual person making the decisions, and thus the entire "simple process" fails completely in achieving its goal.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Indeed. I heard an interesting argument a week or so ago, where one businessman said that one of the problems with banks in the US is that the government insures all deposits (up to a limit). On it's face it sounded possibly terrifying, can you imagine giving your cash to a banker with no gov't insurance. However since the gov't backs the holdings the banks do not need to operate in a low risk manner with that money, since they know regardless they will get bailed out. It made for an interesting thought, in that if the gov't did not insure any of the holdings you can be sure people would only put their money in a bank with an absolutely solid reputation and no tolerance for risk.
There was a similar argument I heard a few years ago regarding insurance companies, in that they also have large holdings which they were investing in ever more risky ventures. The fact that the gov't backs up all deposits implicitly indicates their distrust in the banking system (after all, if it were trustworthy, why would it need backing), but yet they do things like repeal Glass–Steagall which encourages ever more risky behavior. There is a lot the gov't could do to rein in bad bank and investment behaviors. After all if things like derivatives are indeed equivalent to financial mass destruction tools, why not ban them outright. Just because things can be done, doesn't mean they should be allowed.
The problem of "too big to fail" is simple to solve by following this principle: any bank that is too big to fail is also to big to exist. Thus any bank that receives government money must be either closed down or broken up and sold in pieces.
This is the solution proposed by Paul Volcker, and for my money it is the correct one.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I agree with the other poster, as soon as you're "Too Big to Fail" your company should be seized, nationalized, broken up and sold. The ONLY institutions that should have the power to bring the world to its knees like this last crisis did, is governments, and even then im not a big fan. But I feel MUCH better with that power in the hands of my government, than with a private citizen.
Think of it from a military point of view, If my company had a private security force, that rivaled the US/Chinese military, would they let me keep it? Then why the fuck is a company allowed to wield the same economic power?
Funny how historic problems repeat themselves, and we let it. East India Company was so big and its reach so massive that it had it's own flag, its own military, and its administrative section was larger than most governments. Eventually even government officials, who were quite comfortable with someone else managing their nasty colonial duties, began to realize that they had outgrown their own britches and started systematically taking them apart.
-- "In order to have power, I must be taken seriously." -Mojo Jojo