Make that *200 Mercedes Benzes, at $100k a pop
Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz ?
My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends.
Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends,
So Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz ?
–Janis Joplin; lyrics, “Mercedes Benz”
It’s hard to top Joplin for a reaction to the following story in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal:
Hedge-fund manager John Paulson personally netted more than $5 billion in profits in 2010 ” likely the largest one-year haul in investing history, trumping the nearly $4 billion he made with his “short” bets against subprime mortgages in 2007.
By comparison , Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., Wall Street’s most profitable investment bank, paid all of its 36,000 employees a total of $8.35 billion last year.
–“Trader Racks Up a Second Epic Gain”; The Wall Street Journal (1/28/2011)
What The Journal leaves out: the $8.35 billion Goldman paid its employees — almost $232,000 per, including the janitors — omits another $8 billion or so that it paid its 400-odd partners (or an average of $20 million per*).
I don’t know about you, but my gag reflex is in overdrive . . . .
