END THE STARVATION! - AT 7:05 A.M. ET: 

March 12 (Bloomberg) -- Wall Street employees’ base salaries may double as bonuses, which can account for the bulk of pay for bankers and traders, shrink, said Alan Johnson, who runs a compensation consulting firm.

Base salaries have ranged from about $80,000 to $300,000, with bonuses often climbing into the millions of dollars, Johnson said. Now, he says employees who received $250,000 in base salary may get an increase to $500,000 or $600,000.

“Regulators are either requiring it or imploring people to do it,” said Johnson, founder of New York-based Johnson Associates. “Their belief is that part of the reason that firms got in trouble was they had an excessive focus on bonuses because salaries were too low to live on.”

COMMENT:  Another image builder for Wall Street.  Yeah, those salaries were too low to live on.  My great fear is that Wall Street will learn nothing from the current crisis, and will simply figure out a way around new rules.  Our free-enterprise system, the greatest engine of economic progress in history, has been given a black eye.  I'm not sure, considering some of the personalities involved, that the eye will soon be healed.

March 12, 2009