My colleague Michelle Caruso-Cabrera couldn't believe the comments from CNN's Campbell Brown seen in the YouTube Video.
Here's Michelle's guest blog on why Thain should be rewarded for shepherding Merrill Lynch through an awful year, as the company was eventually taken over by Bank of America :
Campbell Brown of CNN says John Thain, CEO of Merrill, shouldn't get a $10 million bonus because her neighbor, who worked at Merrill Lynch, lost her job. Sigh, so often on Wall Street, it's the questions that don't get asked.
Campbell needs to ask her neighbor how much her neighbor's Merrill stock is STILL WORTH. Campbell needs to ask her neighbor what his/her financial situation would be if she had worked, say, for Lehman Brothers, where her stock would have gone to ZERO. If John Thain hadn't done that deal with Bank of America, ALL of the Merrill employees would be out of work because the company would have imploded. Shoot, her neighbor should want John Thain to get $20 million!!
"And here's another point. When you work on Wall Street, you live by the sword, and you die by the sword. When you work on Wall Street, you make tons of money when times are good, and you get axed when times are bad. If you don't like it, and you want security--get a government job, and take lower pay. These massive layoffs we are seeing on Wall Street? They happen every ten years, and her neighbor needed to live his/her life knowing there is no job security on Wall Street. That's the risk calculus he/she accepted when deciding to work on Wall Street.
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