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To: Jill who wrote (164649)	11/15/2008 3:49:15 PM
From: Logain Ablar	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 306849

The good ones are just waiting for bonuses and they will jump anyway. There are plenty of companies looking to acquire the top underwriters.

To: Jill who wrote (164649)	11/15/2008 4:34:59 PM
From: bentway	Respond to of 306849

This shrinking economy is a good opportunity to end ALL executive over-compensation. As you say, the opportunities are shrinking daily for all levels of worker, highly compensated included.

To: Jill who wrote (164649)	11/17/2008 12:37:20 PM
From: GraceZ	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 306849

And where are they going, pray tell? (Leaving the company unless they get their bonus?) Well of course they will leave, if they can. Which means they will be self sorting, the best will leave and the losers will stay. Other companies are now busy offering the best people from these firms, where bonuses are most at risk, even higher percentages to move, some as high as 100% of what they bring in, in the first year! The typical financial firm's compensation costs are 60% bonus based. Certainly if the headline had read that AIG was setting aside 500 million for employee compensation you wouldn't have an issue with that or would you? To say they won't leave what you are effectively saying is that these people, the high performers, would be willing to work for a sixty percent cut in pay (in most cases the cut would be closer to 80-90%). Maybe some will, like CEOs and CFOs who receive most of their compensation in deferred form anyway, in the form of stock options, but you sure aren't going to retain your star mutual fund managers or market makers by doing away with their bonuses because typically their bonuses are five to ten times their salaries. A performance based compensation plan means exactly that, I made the firm 50 million, they owe me x percentage of that. Otherwise I take my skills, the ones I used to make the 50 million, somewhere else. The universe of people who can make 50 million in profit for a financial firm is not unlimited, it is actually fairly small and those people are in high demand. Please don't assume I'm naive, uninformed, just don't know how these things work, or am just "emotional". I didn't assume anything, you proved it. You'd have to be naive to think that an employee who normally makes two million can be replaced by someone who makes a hundred thousand and there will be no performance difference for the firm. As to emotion, anger is an emotion last time I checked. Look how many recs you got on that post! Your post hits on an emotional cord, it is called righteous anger, indignation. You are angry that your government has decided to offer these financial firms taxpayer money, without also forcing them to cut compensation, when the people who work there make so much more money than the average American who pays taxes. It is not surprising that a lot of people here agree with you as does the public at large. No one is thinking past stage one. In other words, if we exact a price for taking taxpayer funds that in effect destroys the business we intended to save, is it the right thing to do even though clearly it is a political winner.