Toxic Bonuses?

Once in a while some ideas are so good they must be considered. Like having slum-lords living in their own houses, the guys at Base Line Scenario have struck gold on this one:

-snip-
Why not say that all bank compensation above a baseline amount - say, $150,000 in annual salary - has to be paid in toxic assets off the bank’s balance sheet? Instead of getting a check for $10,000, the employee would get $10,000 in toxic assets, at their current book value. A federal regulator can decide which assets to pay compensation in; if they were all fairly valued, then it wouldn’t matter which ones the regulator chose. That would get the assets off the bank’s balance sheet, and into the hands of the people responsible for putting them there - at the value that they insist they are worth. Of course, the average employee does not get to set the balance sheet value of the assets, and may not have been involved in creating or buying those particular assets. But think about the incentives: talented people will flow to the companies that are valuing their assets the most realistically (since inflated valuations translate directly into lower compensation), which will give companies the incentive to be realistic in their valuations. (Banks could inflate their nominal compensation amounts to compensate for their overvalued assets, but then they would have to take larger losses on their income statements.)

We can dream, can’t we?

-/snip-

Since most House & Senate Democrats and some RHINOs were responsible for a lot of this idiocy, (Barny Frank, Chris Dodd, for two), it would be reasonable to extend these benefits to members of the House Banking Committee and so forth.

And, to pay for Porkulous 2009...