January 15, 2008

Martin Wolf did right opening the cage!

Sir who could have thought a year ago that we would read Martin Wolf say “Why regulators should intervene in bankers pay”, in the Financial Times, January 15, and agree that he has a valid point; that the system cannot stand to see many franchises of public confidence so savagely exploited by so few. Mind you, on a much different scale, that is exactly how we ended up turning over Venezuela into the hands of an instigator of hate.

Perhaps what we now need is a new layer of progressive taxes specially designed for those who earn more than 100 times the income per capita of the country. The argument seems also applicable to the area of intellectual property rights. When we the society agreed to award patents and invest money defending these so that new inventions would follow, we never did it in order to help the general managers of those patents to earn salaries like hedge funds managers or bankers.

But also what could be most needed, in this case for all, instead of new regulations, is to restore the power of the shareholders since as long as management can decide their own salaries, the market constraints have really not a chance to operate. There’s a fiction making its rounds in the world that the big salary checks are all well deserved and well earned. Who do you think put a spin on that theory?