“And you know, one of the challenges that Tim Geithner has had is the same challenge that anybody would have in this situation. People want a lot of contradictory things. You know, the banks would love a lot of taxpayer money with no strings attached. Folks in Congress, as well as the American people, would love to fix the banks without spending any money. And so at a certain point, you know, you’ve got just a very difficult line to walk.”
“You need the financial community�to solve this crisis,” Kroft remarked. “Do you think that the people on Wall Street and the people in the financial community that you need trust you, believe in you?”
“Part of my job is to communicate to them. Look, I believe in the market. I believe in financial innovation. And I believe in success. I want them to do well. But what I also know is that the financial sector was out of balance. You look at how finance used to operate just 20 years ago, or 25 years ago. People, if you went into investment banking, you were making 20 times what a teacher made. You weren’t making 200 times what a teacher made,” Obama said.
“There is a perception right now, at least in New York, which is where I live and work. �People feel they thought that you were going to be supportive. And now I think there are a lot of people the say, ‘Look, we’re not gonna be able to keep our best people. They’re not gonna stay and work here for $250,000 a year when they can go work for a hedge fund, if they can find one that’s still working�and make a lot more,” Kroft remarked.
Riddle me this Batman? Where are all these geniuses that ran the financial system over the cliff going to go and get a six or seven figure gig? Germany, UK, Hong Kong?
RE: “Where are all these geniuses that ran the financial system over the cliff going to go and get a six or seven figure gig?”
Um. Palagious? Some of the people who got their retention bonus contracts retroactively violated and stolen from by our Congress have already left just in the past week. Noted just two days ago. There are *plenty* of places to go.
Granted — the people who had their retention bonuses retroactively violated and stolen from by our Congress — reversing their codified into law decision of a month earlier, I might add — weren’t the ones who “ran the financial system over the cliff” either.
But I just thought you ought to know that there are [i]plenty[/i] of mid-sized and even large financial companies that have done just swimmingly in the last year and that will be happy to have that talent; they are salivating about all of the people they can snatch away. I get a certain journal in my email box every day and read about the firms that are mopping up the talent constantly.