He didn't say the topic wasn't relevant, he said getting to an insightful comment required wading through a ton of garbage. I tend to agree.

Designing comp packages that work is incredibly complicated. Anyone who proclaims some sort of blanket "solution" to the problem of how to compensate "bankers" probably knows so little that they don't know what they don't know. Normally in situations like that people on hn don't comment at all, but because this issue is so political everyone thinks they have the answer and need to share it with the world.

You mentioned how bankers you worked with gamed the system in your other post. If gaming the system is so easy as a banker, please tell us how much money you gamed?

If you were there for 18 years as you said you were then you should have gamed a ridiculous amount of money out of the system and you would have been through at least 1 if not 2 recessions, 1 of which as a fairly senior banker.

I never said the game was easy and yes I saw several economic cycles, at several different institutions, on both the credit side (when Glass-Steagal actually meant something) and the investment banking side. I was well rewarded for the efforts I put in becoming a junior partner/MD and receiving adequate bonuses a year before the first collapse. Not everyone was consciously gaming the system, but you started to realize it when on successful deals like Global Crossing, which went from (a market cap of US$ 5 bn to chapter 10 bankruptcy the following year), senior exec were taking 20 million+ bonuses, and then being fired a year later. A clear indicator that there was something significantly wrong with the corporate governance bonus systems then.

Now 10+ years later when you see things like the 2008 recession, the current bankruptcy of MF Global and some of the Internet IPOs that are being pitched and sold to smaller institutions and retail investors, and the fees that are being taken, you have to wonder whether anything has really changed and really see how such compensation systems are not in the interests of a healthy financial system. Especially when taxpayers and shareholders have to bailout or bear the economic costs of the distortions created by these bonus systems.

Don't get me wrong there is nothing wrong with people being paid good bonuses and good compensation but as Nassim indicates the amounts being paid are excessive and don't truly reflect the risks being taken.

I don't know how relevant any compensation number would be to the point I am making. But if you did your research amongst the sec filings I am sure you will raise your eyebrows about how much money has been gamed and how disproportionate this is compared to the costs borne by taxpayers and others.

As a banker please recommend SEC filings that would be helpful in determining "gaming". Typically the media likes to use ridiculous numbers like average salary or average bonus per employee etc. (I've never seen a gaming loss section on a 10-K)

You do not need to take risk to make a lot of money in the United States. That is what makes us the greatest economic power house in the world. (yes, far greater than China who's average income is less than $5,000 per day) and especially Europe who is transferring all of their wealth to US treasuries to prevent loosing their money.

The rest of the world isn't even worth mentioning.