Deloitte Study Shows Wall Street Still Paying Bankers to Tak

Remember that little financial crisis thing that happened a couple years back where Wall Street banks and insurance companies named AIG nearly blew up the world's financial markets largely due to their practice of paying employees to take monstrous risks?

Do you also recall not all that long ago a dude named Kenny Feinberg who was tapped by President Obama to hold a position that some called Pay Czar, a job whose duties included making sure all those aforementioned firms that nearly destroyed the world's financial systems changed their pay practices so we wouldn't be susceptible to another worldwide crisis in which millions of folks lost their jobs, homes, and hope for the future?

Well, recently, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu decided that they'd check in with these banks and insurance concerns to see how much they've altered their ways since Kenny Feinberg finished reprimanding them, and what Deloitte found was that ... not much has changed.

In fact, instead of reducing the link between big paydays and big risk, a majority of these firms are back to their pre-financial crisis ways.

Deloitte's study, which "looked at a variety of metrics, including whether the firms used pay caps, clawback provisions and deferred payouts, as part of their overall payment plans," found that "only 37 percent of the [137] financial institutions surveyed had substantially incorporated risk-management concerns into their compensation decisions."

In other words, 63 percent have pretty much flipped off the dude above -- as well as you, me, and your out-of-work pal whose been sleeping and slobbering on your pull-out sofa for the past 16 months.

(NYT)

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