Comments on: Why Bankers Would Rather Work for $0.00 Than $500K

By: d22sa

d22sa — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 21:55:18 +0000

reetings. I follow your site to wish you continued success.

By: pvtclubs

pvtclubs — Wed, 13 May 2009 22:00:04 +0000

Socialist BS!

By: Roger Dupere

Roger Dupere — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 17:25:03 +0000

Crazy world we live in !

I steal $50MM from the bank like the CEO did and instead of asking for the money back, the president ask me to run the bank free for another 5 years. What a way to get people to corect their ways !

The only difference is that now everyone hnows what I am. Those peoples are not what we need to run our institutions!

By: Corianna

Corianna — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 16:51:23 +0000

a micro gift economy: the really really free market http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/29/nyregion/29free.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

By: Mercy O

Mercy O — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 17:33:06 +0000

I couldn’t agree more with the premise of this article but I wonder how we can expect our government officials to ask of corporate executives what they don’t even ask of themselves? (Please note that I refer here to ‘government officials’ not just ‘President Obama.’)

For example, the mayor of my city and his executive committee have recently decided NOT to hold a full council debate on the issue of councillor pay freezes. Everywhere you look these days you see people being laid off, salaries being frozen and, in more rare cases, CEOs offering to draw only one dollar for their annual pay.

I live in one of the most dynamic, progressive cities in North America and our mayor’s executive committee isn’t even willing to DEBATE an important and timely issue amongst themselves. What hope can I possibly have for corporate executives if elected officials behave this way?

By: Barry Margolin

Barry Margolin — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 19:01:04 +0000

Although this might work, is it something that can realistically be included in a government plan to solve the economic problems? Gifts have to come from spontaneous decisions by the giver, or carefully framed requests. Since it’s entirely voluntary, it’s hard to depend on it; an employee feels an obligation to work as long as he’s being paid, but a volunteer may get bored and move on to some other pursuit.

How would the government include “recruit bank CEOs to volunteer their expertise” in economic recovery legislation?

By: Aaron

Aaron — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 14:58:50 +0000

This is true in a lot of businesses. I used to put together seminars using volunteer speakers. Occasionally somebody I tried to recruit would ask how much we paid, and I would reply “nothing” (albeit a bit more gracefully); most of the time that wasn’t a deterrent. But had I offered a token payment rather than appealing to their sense of altruism I would have lost a lot of potential contributors.

I once recruited an expert who agreed to present at a seminar for about 10% of his standard fee (due to the fact that the presentation was near where he lived. The director of the institute insisted that we try to negotiate to pay even less. You can guess how that went over. (And yes, it was management making a “cut off your nose to spite your face” decision – despite his requested fee, which was actually quite modest, we would have made more money with him in the program.)