Blog by Mark Gongloff, chief financial writer, The Huffington Post
Angry about your paycheck shrinking this year because the payroll tax cut expired? Well, this should cheer you right up: Goldman Sachs's CEO got a 75 percent raise this year.
Lloyd Blankfein made $21 million last year, including a $2 million salary and a $19 million bonus, CNN/Money reports. That bonus includes $5.6 million in cash. Bloomberg pegs the total pay at $19 million, but what's a couple of million dollars, really?
Blankfein's haul represents a 75 percent pay increase from the year before, CNN/Money notes. It is also nearly double the paltry $11.5 million that Jamie Dimon, CEO of the nation's biggest bank, JPMorgan Chase, took home.
Unlike Dimon, Blankfein's bank did not nightmarishly botch up a massive credit-derivatives trade that cost it $6 billion, as JPMorgan did (although JPMorgan still managed to turn in a record profit). Goldman Sachs's profit nearly doubled last year, and its stock price jumped 49 percent. And as we all know, Goldman Sachs does God's work, which apparently consists mainly of trading stuff as much as possible, notes CNBC's John Carney.
We know what you're thinking: Grrrr!! You may think that your job -- educating children, say, or fighting fires -- is maybe more valuable to society than Blankfein's job of fleecing muppets and moving money around until it magically turns into more money. It's not fair, you're thinking.
In fact, some of you might be thinking, maybe it's corrosive to pay so much money to people for doing nothing much more than magically turning money into more money. It might incentivize them at some point down the road to, I don't know, cram derivatives full of toxic mortgage assets and foist them on unsuspecting muppets. You know, God's work.
Can't argue with you.
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