If you tanked the world economy, would you deserve a bonus?

If you work for a major bank in the industrialized world, from Tokyo to New York, then the answer to the question should be an outright NO. Do you deserve a bonus for tanking the world economy? No. Do you deserve a bonus in the U.S. where the average individual is now in increasing peril of filing for bankruptcy because of your stupid mismanagement of the housing market, mortgage backed securities, credit default swaps, or any number of bad banking decisions that led to the current situation? No, you do not. You get bonuses for a job well done, not for drunk driving the world headlong into the worst financial disaster since October 1929.

I could not believe it when I read about the estimated bonuses for bankers working at top companies. I have to agree with another web user, JLP: some people claim bonuses are necessary to keep top talent, but I doubt that's true. I think it's more likely the people saying that want their own bonuses. I also feel like Joe Mysak described in his editorial, I want the bankers heads after even the suggestion that they should get bonuses. First of all, the extreme bonus system of big investment banks was probably a bad idea to begin with and needs to be reformed as both Mysak discussed in his editorial (and as William D. Cohan suggested in today's New York Times). Second, if a bank was just given some cash by the U.S. government, I don't care if the bonuses come from a different pile of money, you don't get bonuses when you need to borrow money.

Once I had a friend who was sick and in financial straits. She asked me if she could borrow $50 to buy her medication. Of course I willingly lent her money I figured I wouldn't see again. My willingness to help though was tinged with anger when I learnt that she had gone to a tanning salon the day before. Sorry, but if you have money for a tanning salon then you don't need a loan from me for medication, end of story. People with the kind of thinking evidenced by my friend then and bankers now have met grim fates in past troubled times. Just think Marie Antoinette and Revolutionary France. You can eat your cake, but if you're not careful, your head may in fact roll as Maureen Dowd suggested. So all that money these banks have stashed away for bonuses, they may want to view that as a source of cash flow and bailout funds, rather than turning to the U.S. government for handouts.

Kansas Congressman Dennis Moore (Democrat of course) keeps an update on his website about the size of the U.S. debt (as of October 15, 2008, that would be $10,326,055,380,264.11). That is $33,807.90 per person in the U.S. So, bankers, if you get your bonuses, perhaps some small redemption might be sought by paying down your and several others' share of the national debt. Or, perhaps you can bail out the educated classes, as suggested by one Facebook group, by paying off all $17 billion of outstanding student loans. Or maybe they can have a lottery of homeowners to bailout so that fewer people have to live out of their cars come spring. But if bankers give themselves these bonuses and keep it, they better hope it's enough to purchase a hideaway in a remote location where the angry mob can't show up with torches, pitchforks, and a guillotine.