Trouble on Wall Street

Wall Street powerhouses to be bailed out - by foreign governments, posted Jan. 10 on "AMERICAblog," talks about the huge losses that banks on Wall Street have been taking recently. The post goes on to say how these banks have made incredibly close ties to foreign nations and, with their current hardships taking place, are turning to these foreign nations for help. This whole situation is laid out by the blogger in a very negative light, especially the executives of the banks who are still very wealthy. I agree in the sense that this is a bad situation for the banking business, this includes banks all over the world, not just the ones on Wall Street, but I disagree for the most part about the blogger's opinion on the whole matter. The blogger slams the executives for bonuses they gained during the relative prosperity that was going on a few years back and accuses them of being poor businessmen; he blames them for the current trouble that the banking companies are currently experiencing. I'm not going to say that all of these points are totally baseless because it is possible that they're right in some cases. But, as the saying goes, hind sight is 20-20 and there would be no way for the executives to know how the market would fluctuate. When companies are doing well and prospering, it is by no means unusual for the owners to take bonuses as excess profits come in. And then, if and when things change for the worst, they work hard to help the company and bring it back, but going so far to say that their bonuses caused the problem or that they should take the money back out of their own pockets to help bring the company back would be incredibly unlikely that anyone in their situation would do. I would even go so far as to say that no one, not even Chris in Paris, would give up their money in said situation. In short, I'm saying that the people who run these banks are not idiots and they're not crooks; to have made it to the positions that they're in means that they must have some significant business skill and taking bonuses when things are good and there's money to spare is common practice and not unethical. As to the reason that the banks have lost billions recently, it’s possible that mistakes were made and that they're just fluctuations resulting from tough economic times. But, whether or not it was because of bad business moves by executives running the banks or not, it wasn't because they took bonuses while times were good and they shouldn't be made out like villains for it.