Buddy, Can You Spare a Dime?

As economic doom settles in, it is good to see that at least some people have managed to eke out a living in these hard times:


A report by Jenny Anderson in the NY Times discusses these "titans of finance" and the meagre earnings they make by the sweat of their brow. Not all are happy. For example:

Even on Wall Street, where money is the ultimate measure of success, the size of the winnings makes some uneasy. “There is nothing wrong with it — it’s not illegal,” said William H. Gross, the chief investment officer of the bond fund Pimco. “But it’s ugly.”

And Mr. Gross, the fund manager, warned that the widening divide among the richest and everyone else is cause for worry.

“Like at the end of the Gilded Age and the Roaring Twenties, we are going the other way,” Mr. Gross said. “We are clearly in a period of excess, and we have to swing back to the middle or the center cannot hold."

Barry Ritholtz argues that the above guys are not the mugs you should hate. He argues they earned their billions. He wants us -- the crowd with the pitchforks and torches -- to mob at the doorstep of what he calls the "crony capitalists":

On the other hand, there are plenty of bad actors they should be truly upset about instead. Stan O'Neal of Merrill Lynch (MER), Chuck Prince of Citigroup (C), Robert Nardelli of Home Depot -- any many, many more undeserving cads -- are value destroyers. And they got paid an absurd amount of money to help destroy the very companies they were brought into run. If you have a retirement account (IRA, 401k, Pension plan) then they took money from you. That is unconscionable to me. ...

The short answer is Crony capitalism. They have (had) do-nothing-boards who failed to watch out for the shareholders' interest.