New Proposals for Restricting Wall Street Pay

New rules that put restrictions on how some Wall Street firms pay out bonuses were put out for comment by one of the six government agencies responsible for adopting those reforms. The rule changes were mandated by Dodd-Frank which became law in 2010 and the initial proposal which came out in 2011 was considered so weak it had to be shelved.  Finally, nearly 5 years later, we have a new set of proposals and they certainly don’t look like they will change they way Wall Street compensates their top people in any substantive way.  As the New York Times notes, “(T)he proposals leave many financial firms, including large asset managers and hedge funds, shielded from the new restrictions because of the way the regulators have defined which institutions are subject to them…For those institutions subject to the rules, the new restrictions are broadly in line with changes that many banks have already been making since the financial crisis”. I would still expect the bankers to complain that these proposals are too restrictive and interfere with the conduct of their business.  But the fact of the matter is that this is probably a win for Wall Street, again.