May 19, 2011
I’m writing because my family and I were affected by the economic collapse of 2008, and we don’t want it to happen again.
As a public school educator for 10 years, I have first hand experience how the economic disaster has affected education in America. Because of the economic downturn, many states and school districts are drastically reducing much needed funding for education, which will only make students less able to compete in the world economy. How are we as a country supposed to be "Number One" if education is stripped to the bone? This is a direct result of Wall Street and the excesses of their practices.
Wall Street greed and outrageous pay practices were a major cause of the collapse. One way to change the incentives so they don’t collapse our economy again would be for regulators to use a *safety index* for incentive compensation, instead of a profit index.
Currently, most bankers receive stock options. So if they can generate more profits, the stock price goes up, and their options become more valuable.
Instead, what if they used the bank’s bond price, which measures the overall ability of the bank to repay its own debt? Another measure of bank stability is the spread on credit default swaps (the insurance-like policies that are essentially bets, where one gambler bets with another that a particular firm will fail). The closer a bank comes to failing (such as in failing to pay of its bond debt), the bigger the spread on credit default swaps.
Thank you for considering my comment,
Luis Garza