In This Economy?

photo: REUTERS

How does $600,000 sound? Well, if you’re one of the 28,000 employees who work at Goldman Sachs, you’re getting that. After which I’m guessing you’re also going to get a lot of a$$.

$eriously?!

Here’s the thing though: Sure times are tough. But does every employee need $600k?! I mean, good for big ol’ Goldman for being virtually the ONLY company to not only use their multibillion-dollar government bailout to save their company’s ass, but actually report effing fantastic profits! And on top of that they actually paid back their bailout loan!

I’m Just $aying:

Isn’t $600,ooo perhaps a teensy, weensy bit extreme? That’s six rich people’s salaries! That’s 12 middle class people’s salaries! That’s 24 average folk salaries! For goodness sake that’s like 120 THOUSAND Goodwill stereos! PER PERSON! Do they have interns there? There are probably baby junior assistant number crunchers over there who are literally shitting themselves like they just won the fucking lottery. I can imagine. Actually, I can’t. I literally cannot imagine being given $600 GRAND as a bonus for my company doing so well in this economy. I can, however, imagine feeling really, really guilty for accepting it. I can definitely imagine that. I mean, how do you rationalize being given that much bank!? “I totally deserve this $600k. I worked really, really hard this year.” Really? I imagine the average plumber works harder than the average pencil pusher at a giant like Goldman. But maybe I’m just bitter…

All In A Day’$ Work

Above: actual money bag.

Bitter rhymes with bigger which brings me to my bigger problem which isn’t the giant moneybags (actual gigantic, comic bookgrapic novel-style bags, are what I’m picturing), themselves. It’s with the earning of them. It’s a question of whether the employees did any more work than their normal jobs would require in order to receive this grand payment. Did they work so gosh darn relentlessly toward the success of their company that a bonus that size was actually deserved? I’m betting not. I repeat, “I totally deserve this $600k. I worked really, really hard this year.” Right.

Ri$ky Bu$ine$$

Turns out it’s the method Goldman uses to trade that gets the big numbers. They’re risky. Like seriously risky. As in scary risky. For if they take the wrong risk, it could be a free fall harder than (insert-phallic-euphemism-joke-here). And a lot of other numbers are riding on their numbers (insert-sexual-riding-joke-here). That’s as far into this subject as I’m willing to get. I’m assuming it only gets scarier the more you dig deeper.

The article predicting Goldman Sachs’ sacks ‘o gold handover comes on the heels of Obama’s announcement that everyone American’s favorite plan to love yet hate, AKA the multi-billion-dollar stimulus plan, “has worked as intended.” Well, at this point I’m going to go with “yes and no” on that one. There are some bailed-out financial institutions doing well, like JP Morgan Chase, but most of the others are certainly lacking in success, to put it lightly. Or at least any success they can attribute to their government-gotten gains. But according to Obama’s people, the stimulus was designed to stop the bleeding versus bring the economy back to perfect health in an instant.

Vampire Squid

Vampire $quid?!?

And speaking of bleeding, my favorite part of the Times’ article is when they quote Rolling Stones writer Matt Taibbi. He called Goldman Sachs “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” Damn. How do you really feel, Taibbi? That’s a heck of a name, by the way, sir. And you’re also quite handsome. Please don’t hate on me! But if you do, can I be some sort of jellyfish?

What would you do if you got a check for $600,000 one day at work? Let us know on Twitter.

Tags: $600, 000, bailout, goldman sachs, JPMorgan Chase, money, moneybags, obama

This entry was posted on Monday, July 13th, 2009 at 3:57 PM and is filed under Bad News, Good News, WTF. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.