I actually think this is something worth exploring, from the New York Times’ Andrew Sorkin:
Maybe someone deserves a bonus.
Like someone who sniffs out the next Bernie Madoff. Or jousts with tomorrow’s gonzo bankers. Or defuses the Next Big Crisis in whatever Next Big Thing is dreamed up by Wall Street.
Someone, in short, who regulates.
Why not reward a regulator, or group of regulators, who bring down some big corporate game? A little incentive never hurt anyone, and if the bonus consisted of a portion of fines actually collected it could never be criticized as being based on the illusory profits on which so many Wall Street bonuses are based.
But the very next paragraph in the story gives one pause:
It is clear that the nation’s financial regulators were no match for Wall Street last time. The financiers were always one step ahead. But maybe that isn’t surprising. The financiers, after all, have a big incentive to outsmart the financial police. It is called a bonus. Wall Street lures a lot of bright minds with money. How can federal agencies compete? They can’t.
Actually, it ain’t necessarily so. Not everyone is motivated solely by money. There are plenty of people out there, and many at government agencies that are smart and dedicated to doing a good job. Lots of people believe they ought to work in a field where they can make a decent living and do some good, or at least do no harm. Government work fits that description, unlike Wall Street. Nowhere in this article does Sorkin mention that the people in charge of those regulators for the past eight years have reined them in at every turn, taking a chainsaw to those regulations, and refusing to allow them to get subpoenas to enforce the law (and then blasting them for not getting them when things go wrong). Regulation didn’t save us from this disaster because the political appointees charged with enforcing those regulations were ideologically averse to doing so, and each was looking forward to making big bucks in those regulated industries after doing their bit to destroy good government. No amount of bonuses to the underlings is going to correct that. If the American people insist on electing people who brazenly proclaim their intentions to serve the interests of the plutocrats they will continue to get regulatory misfeasance.
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