Shorter CNBC: “If you pay peanuts, you’ll get monkeys.”
Mark Haines leans on one of the hoariest of entrepreneurial memes:
HAINES: Let’s get back to what I regard as a fundamental issue here. I know it’s politically unpopular, politically incorrect. I know it goes against all of the populist indignation that’s out there right now. But you can’t really, it seems to me, expect that these Wall Street companies are going to be run well by a bunch of people who don’t make more than $250,000.
Fact is, I know a lot of people who would happily work for that sum. For one thing, they’d bring a lot more down-home common sense and integrity to the job. The other guys? They are systematically destroying the Free Market brand, one of the oldest and most trusted brands in America.
And Haines is not alone. He’s drinking the same kool-aid as John Thain:
If you don’t pay your best people, you will destroy your franchise.
…to which Jon Stewart famously replied:
You don’t have “best people!” You lost $27 billion! Do you live in Bizarro World?
Well, do you?
