Bonus season is fast approaching on Wall Street, but this year the talk does not center just on multimillion-dollar paydays. It’s about a new club that no one wants to join: the Zeros.
Drawn from a broad swath of back-office employees and middle-level traders, bankers and brokers, the Zeros, as they have come to be called, are facing a once-unthinkable prospect: an annual bonus of … nothing.
“It’s going to a cause a lot of panic on Wall Street,” said Richard Stein of Global Sage, an executive search firm. “Everybody is talking about it, but they’re actually concerned about it becoming public. I would not want to be head of compensation at a Wall Street firm right now.”
In some ways, a zero bonus should not come as a surprise to many bankers. As a result of the 2008 financial crisis, Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs and banks like Citigroup raised base pay substantially in 2009 and 2010. They were seeking to placate regulators who had argued that bonuses based on performance encouraged excessive risk.
At Goldman, for instance, the base salary for managing directors rose to $500,000 from $300,000, while at Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse it jumped to $400,000 from $200,000.
How does one deal with the existential crisis of having your pay DOUBLED to $500,000 yet getting no Christmas bonus? Who said the hardships from the economic crisis aren’t hitting everyone?
I just hate these people.
singfoom
But, how are they going to trickle down their wealth? Without the bonus, no new Mazeratti. No new Mazeratti means no regular car wash and detailing for said new car.
If they don’t get their bonuses they can’t buy all their expensive toys that keep our economy going by having us service them.
Where’s the mob? I’ll get my pitchfork and burning brand. I doubt glass & steel highrises offer as much protection as old time castles….
sukabi
the lot of the fuckers should be out on the street, in barrels, having to catch their next meal from the rotten crap that’s being hurled at them.
ruemara
1. I could mow these guys down with a pavement smoother, no problemo.
2. Aren’t you going on vacay? You’re like a worthless government worker, sticking around to do stuff even during the hollowdays.
rickstersherpa
If you want to get depressed, read the comments on the U.S. Census story on MSNBC. Apparently, the competing memes infinite numbers of uncounted Latina anchor babies or the invasion of the Sharia Muslim women, not the bankers, our the source of all our problems and high taxes.
Maude
The bonus is like a chew toy to Rosie.
The salary is like regular dog food.
rickstersherpa
I forgot the depressing link. A real thrill seeing all the kind souls filled with good will for one’s fellow man.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40764172/ns/us_news-life/
Omnes Omnibus
I will volunteer to take a $500K salary in return for giving up my bonus.
ChrisS
@rickstersherpa:
So with TX gaining four seats because of non-voting latino anchor babies= GOP Win, amiright?
They should be ecstatic. Arizona and NM are fairly reliably GOP. I think they’re totally missing the boat on resisting the brown hordes.
ChrisS
@Omnes Omnibus:
My bonus this year was, as usual, a piece of firm logo’d apparel. I think it’s a bulk purchased fleece jacket this year.
I’ll trade that for a doubling of my salary.
Omnes Omnibus
@ChrisS: I think this trend could catch on.
Paul in KY
Like the Smashing Pumpkins riff in the title. One of their best songs, & I’m sure right wingers hate it (I hope so).
Comrade Dread
@ruemara: Time off or holidays or sanity days for John usually mean 12 posts/day instead of 3.
As to the topic, frankly, these guys should be grateful they aren’t in a Siberian gulag after what they did to the rest of us.
jwb
Yeah, but what about all those unionized public employees raking in the money, retiring early and writing novels. That’s what I’m told I should really be upset about.
freelancer
You aren’t alone. Reading Taibbi’s Griftopia, I keep getting more and more stunned at the level of incompetence, greed, and utter carelessness these people are capable of attaining. And trying to communicate it to anyone even remotely tuned in is impossible. My generation gets it, but our parents? No way. Between my parents, and any of their friends, and demogoguery aimed at the super-rich Masters of the Universe is misheard as shaming small-business owners that they know and in some cases are. Then the complaint about the Rich selling the country out is deflected by excusing the country’s financial woes on young bucks buying T-bones with WIC checks and (Black or Hispanic) people who buy food stamps getting HDTVs.
Are you thick?! I’m not talking about you and your hard earned 2% profit, you asshole! I’m talking about smug Gordon Gekko megalomaniacs who produce NOTHING but destruction, and whinge when they don’t get paid their obscene bonus.
jwb
@freelancer: Just look at the comments tpoo the previous post to see this attitude enacted in its full glory.
SP
My wife’s a teacher, and her bonus this year was, I’m not kidding, a pad of post-it notes (the medium square ones) and a whiteboard marker. And it wasn’t a joke, it was wrapped up in a piece of cellophane with a bow. At some point you just shouldn’t give bonuses if they’re so crappy because it just highlights how crappy they are, just don’t do anything and some people will forget they never got anything.
Mary Jane
Bonus? I got a box of chocolate covered cherries from the Dollar Store.
In an L.A. Times LTE, Mr. Terry J. of Newport Beach is bitching about the estate tax. Fuck you sideways, greedy asshole.
trollhattan
WTF is a “bonus”? I’ve been allowed to go home early Christmas Eve, was that a bonus? If so, yay bonuses!
Mary Jane
@trollhattan: You’re a glass half full kind of person, aren’t you? Good on you, for real.
Cheers.
cckids
My spouse & I are self-employed. Our “bonus” this year is that one of our clients, after stiffing us for 6 months while he traveled the world, finally paid up yesterday!! Woo-hoo!.
Although I, too, will gladly exchange it for a doubling of my salary. And won’t cry, complain, or throw a public drama-fest about it. You’re welcome.
Cat Lady
And yet, they refuse to go Galt. Huh.
ruemara
I work for a local government as a a highly skilled creative/broadcast engineer in a 1.5 man department that does the job our local private equivalent does with 7 full time employees. I make less than an I.T. intern because my job description is “clerical” and my bonus is less furlough time this contract. If I’m lucky, my next COL increase will put me over the top in earnings. What’s my big grab, you say? I should land a hefty 14.86$ per hour. For just my broadcast engineer stuff, the average is 18$. Fuck these people with rusty typhoid encrusted chainsaws. Where the fuck is the people’s Dexter? Aren’t these guys the destructive sociopaths?
Jay in Oregon
@Omnes Omnibus:
+1
Bill Arnold
It being Christmas, now is a good time for “In defense of Scrooge”.
It is only slightly tongue-in-cheek.
freelancer
@ruemara:
Sadly, Patrick Bateman isn’t near as concerned about his fellow MOTU’s greed as he is pissed off about their faux interest in Huey Lewis and one-upping his business card.
ruemara
@freelancer:
maybe it’s the hater in me, but that made me lol. And, yes, I read the book long before the movie.
Ash Can
I will note that the excerpt mentions back-office and mid-level people specifically, rather than the top earners. These are not the real villains in the whole economy-sinking caper.
Having said that, however, it galls me to no end that any of these people should whine about missing bonuses. Bonuses are so named because they come from surplus — if your company isn’t running a surplus for the year, hey, guess what? No bonus. Deal with it.
And if the reason mid-level and back-office people aren’t getting bonuses is to preserve the bonuses paid out to the top-level earners, then there are NO words to describe how despicable that would be.
El Cid
Wow, suddenly I actually feel bad about having received a Christmas bonus. Sure, the company I work for has always made a decent profit and was even more successful this year, my bonus was large enough to help me pay rent.
To hear that on Wall Street the people who make our economy go and who lay all these golden eggs get nothing when I do, it’s like allowing a family member to miss our Christmas get-together because they can’t afford the gas to drive there.
catclub
Clearly, these guys have never learned how to manage their finances, and without the bonuses, they will be broke by the end of the month. They have been spending all year with the bonus factored in. They thought that counting your chickenes before they are hatched is a mistake only the little people make.
Schedenfreudelicious!
twiffer
i would much rather have a raise than a bonus. you don’t even need to double my salary. just increase it the amount of the bonus.
the thing is, i don’t expect to get a bonus. it’s nice and all, and i was frankly surprised the first time i got one. thing is, it’s not guaranteed to come every year. i make sure i don’t expect it or plan for it, cause i might not get one. a bigger salary would be far more welcome.
FlipYrWhig
Head like a hole, black as your soul.
Montysano
“Well. . . shucks. It makes a man’s eyes damp, for sure.” – Hunter S. Thompson
I read this article, and a couple others, and the gist I’m getting is that the ultra rich are now screwing the merely wealthy. Lloyd Blankfein is apparently due for a $24.9M payday, while “throwing” a measly $25K at those who were used to getting much more.
Barb (formerly Gex)
Don’t worry. The bonuses will be back. The resentful elements of the white Christian working class won’t allow for this. I’m pretty sure this is the type of thing that is a punishment from God because of all the “support” this country gives gays.
licensed to kill time
@ruemara:
Dear Sir or Madam ruemara:
I am intrigued by your idea for a People’s Dexter and would like to apply for the position forthwith, as soon as I sharpen my knife collection and stock up on Handi-Wrap.
This may take some time as I was recently informed that my bonus this year will be a big fat zero, which intensifies my desire for the position but decreases my ability to stock the necessary supplies.
If my situation improves, or worsens as the case may be, I will contact you once again in the hopes that the position has not already been filled. I can imagine that the list of applicants is quite long and that I have scant hope of landing such a worthy position, but hope is my primary sustenance these days and will have to serve.
Yours truly, (already!) licensed to kill (time, for the present).
HelpThe99ers
The real beauty quote from the piece:
Kind of says it all.
Joseph Nobles
I see this sentence much like I imagine the French revolutionaries looked at a statement imputed to Marie Antoinette.
bemused
These whiners should disgust anyone. However, you talk to just about any republican and he/she will get beet red with indignation over low incomers, gov’t employees, teachers, the long term unemployed and so on getting “free rides” that they have to pay for. I don’t hear them bitching about rich whiners. Of course, they are hearing little if anything about bonus babies listening to fox, rush and reading drudge.
Chris
What happened to the days when a bonus was actually a bonus, something you got for being an exceptional CEO and not just something you got a bunhc of at the end of every year because that’s what all the cool kids were doing?
Martin
Indeed! What’s his bonus going to be? A mere million or two? And the burden of that job, having thousands of well-to-do people screaming at him and calling him bad names! Who would sign up for such punishment for a paltry several million dollars per year?
Much better to work food service or down at the DMV where you know such boorish behavior would not have to be tolerated and a rightful compensation would be offered.
Mike in NC
My company gave out glazed donuts as a Christmas bonus. Humbug!
dadanarchist
At last, something all BJ commentators can unite around: contempt for the banksters.
These bastards should be on their knees thanking the ghost of Milton Friedman that none of their heads ended up on pikes.
Would it be considered a hate crime if it started mailing this image to random brokerage houses?
Martin
@Mike in NC: After losing 40% of my staff last year to layoffs/etc., I only lost one this year. My bonus was my 50 hour week became a 60 hour week. I gained 20%!
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@ChrisS:
In NM we currently have two Dem senators and Dems hold 2 out the 3 House seats. In NM-1, which used to be the swing seat in the state’s Congressional delegation, Martin Heinrich won by 4 points, beating Joe Barela 52-48 in the year of the deluge – which bodes well for future years that aren’t wave elections. And the voting record of our 4 Dems isn’t bad either.
If a half a dozen other formerly red states were “fairly reliably GOP” like that, we’d be in better shape nationally.
But aside from all that, please continue.
catclub
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Well, given the crazy that comes out of Arizona…
_on average_, Arizona and New Mexico are fairly reliably GOP.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@catclub:
“Poor New Mexico, so far from God, so close to Arizona.”
Cris
ThatLeftTurnInABQ already covered this, but I have to chime in. NM is about as reliably GOP as is Massachusetts.
Or perhaps Illinois would be the better comparison: when I lived there, the Democratic party was the stronghold of the Old Boys’ Club. It works for the people, but it works for itself first.
asiangrrlMN
@Omnes Omnibus: I think we’ve started the revolution. Any one of these fuckers who complain can give up their job to someone who won’t complain about the lack of bonus.
On my first 9-to-5 job, where I was making a luxurious $18,000 a year (counselor for juvenile delinquents), not only did we not get a bonus, we got no raise for the next year. Now that’s hardcore!
Jay in Oregon
@dadanarchist:
Edited for accuracy. :)
FNWA
I live in an NYC suburb (a crappy one) and I hate these people with the intensity of a thousand white hot suns. In my industry a Christmas bonus is an extra week’s pay. We haven’t gotten that for the last two years as the economy is so shaky that the funds need to be saved in case there is an issue about making the weekly payroll. (We’re too damn small to get a loan to make payroll.) The banksters are making their money from their traders who add no value to any transaction they touch and I’m supposed to feel bad for the people who make five times my income as salary because they won’t get a bonus?
The thing is, none of us are actually willing to get out the pitch forks and head out to Connecticut and slay these fuckers. I’ve found a way to make my life work. I’ve got a house and I’ve found a church based school that works for my kids (that one hurt since I don’t believe) and I’m just doing my work and hoping that I can afford to put my kids through college some way.
There’s the crux. I can’t really justify doing something extreme that might have an excellent long term benefit in the face of muddling through in the short term.