Bank CEO thinks journalist salaries are 'outrageous'

The tax system still incentivizes philanthropy right?

 

Easy to to make money when you lie, cheat and steal. Will Dimon and other executives face clawbacks for the profits they earned using illegal behavior?

From the <a href="http://www.americanbanker.com/issues/177_49/chase-credit-cards-collections-occ-probe-linda-almonte-1047437-1.html">American Banker</a>--surely not a populist news source:

 

In the words of the great Mr. Springsteen: "Banker man grows fat. Working man grows thin. It's all happened before. It'll happen again."

 

And in 95% of those cases you could probably safely substitute the words "forged and fraudulent documents" for "procedural shortcuts".

 

Dimon is either disingenuous or clueless.

First of all, workplaces which require a more skilled workforce will always have a larger percentage of expenses going to employees. This is true with public school teachers, media companies, and professional sports.

Second, the 35 percent in Dimon's bank is spread much more unevenly than in newspapers. There are a few people who make an incredible amount of money and a lot of clerical people, tellers, and assistant vice-presidents who make a relatively small amount. An Assistant Vice-President of a bank not making much money, you say? That's right - a branch manager or computer programmer can be an assistant vice-president and make less money than the title might imply. Banks are more generous with titles than salary.

 

What does the head of the Five Families pull down? I'm sure he earns every penny.

 

Yep, they hand out "assistant vice-president" titles like candy at financial companies. They mean nothing. I'm doing contract work for banks right now and my boss is an "assistant vice-president." He doesn't pull down more than $50k and he manages maybe 11 people. It seems like almost every manager gets "something vice-president" appended to their title somewhere. It ain't a bad gig, but it's not what one outside might expect just from hearing what he puts on his business card.