December 11, 2009

Razzle Dazzle From Goldman

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Goldman Sachs plans to restructure its bonus payouts this year:

With a resurgent Goldman set to award billions of dollars in bonuses — a trove that could rival the record payouts of the bubble years — the bank said that its 30 most-senior executives would be paid in the form of a special stock, rather than in cash…..This year, [CEO Lloyd Blankfein] and other top executives will receive bonuses in the form of what Goldman called “shares at risk,” or stock that cannot be sold for five years and can be retracted if the executive does something reckless or risky that hurts the firm.

Can I just take this opportunity to say how underwhelmed I am with this?  Let me count the ways.  (1) The amount of the bonuses hasn’t changed a whit, only their form. (2) The whole point of changing a compensation plan is to change incentives.  Announcing a new bonus plan at the end of the year does nothing to change incentives unless Blankfein invents a time machine too. (3) It’s only for the top 30 executives.  What about the traders? (4) It’s apparently only for this year. See #2.  (5) The official definition of reckless (“materially improper risk analysis”) is so stringent that there’s really no chance it will ever apply to anyone.

So what’s the real point of this little kabuki play?  Dennis Berman translates here.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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