Another poor, oppressed, put-upon 1 percenter ............ [View all]

[marmar]

Versailles Watch: John Mack Whines About How Badly Wall Street CEOs are Treated
Posted on February 12, 2014 by Yves Smith


You cannot make this stuff up. Reader Chris kindly sent this snapshot from a Google search:



.....(snip).....

The CNBC story flags the inflammatory portion, which starts at 5:23:

He (Mack) said he would love to see people “stop beating up on Lloyd and Jamie.” He added: “I think that would make a lot of sense, and I’m in favor of that.”

He said a debate over compensation was necessary and “healthy,” but he emphasized that chief executives should be judged according to their companies’ performance.

“As long as shareholders reward performance — what these companies have delivered — we can argue is it $10 million too much or $1 million too much,” Mr. Mack said.

Robert Peston, today writing about Barclays, by happenstance rebutted Mack’s efforts to off brush the fact that the leader of the banks that drove the global economy off the cliff were still employed at lavish pay levels:

The problem is that there is blank incomprehension from those not in the industry that the going rate remains so high for people widely seen as being more than walk-ons in the epic near-destruction of global financial capitalism just a short while ago.

The worst is that Mack and other members of his class (elite financiers and the 0.1%) really don’t get it. They live in such a cloistered world that the fact that they’ve gotten away with abject incompetence, malfeasance, and in the case of JP Morgan, almost certain criminal conduct (among other things, as we have discussed in considerable detail, Sarbanes Oxley violations and the criminal case that the DoJ settled rather than prosecuted), according to Mack, is perfectly kosher if investors don’t mind. And why should investors mind? Last I checked, crime and predatory conduct are very lucrative businesses if you can get away with it. ......................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/02/versailles-watch-john-mack-whines-badly-wall-street-ceos-treated.html