Ask some questions about the payouts

There's not one person reading this column who can honestly say they understand fully how Wall Street investments truly work. If they did, they would be reading this column over the Internet from some remote island in the Pacific. The truth is - be it Wal-Mart stock or your 401k - virtually all of us are clueless on the intricate variables that make up the world of investments.

Yet even with this amazing lack of knowledge on Wall Street, millions of Americans follow the daily ups and downs of the "market" because somehow we all know it's important. We keep a curious eye on oil price futures because we understand what we pay at the pump. We follow retail sales of stores we know because that may translate into something that could impact our lives. But for the most part, we stare at the Wall Street numbers and act like they're important to us because in some ways we don't understand, they probably are.

So shareholders in the securities industry - those big investment firms that control billions and billions of our dollars - have been hit hard in 2007. Those big investment firms lost $74 billion in equity this year. So why and how are these banking firms getting ready to hand out year-end bonuses to the tune of $38 billion?

The bonuses amount to $201,500 for every one of the 186,000 workers in the securities industry on Wall Street. For we average folk, that's a bundle of cash in a business that lost its shirt this past year.

One big banking firm said they were "forced" to pay out the bonuses because otherwise they would lose some of the "key people." Are those the same "key people" partially responsible for the $74 billion loss this year? If so, maybe they aren't so darned "key."

Let's face it - you and I don't understand the process that rewards incompetence. In my business world, if you make a major mistake you pay a price. And the last thing you do is to reward failure. But maybe Wall Street knows more about business than the rest of us.

There's a lot of talk these days about the income gap in this country. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. You've probably heard that before. But in a time when we hear about down-sizing and people losing their homes and factories moving their operations to other countries, I suspect we don't want to hear about some hot-shot Wall Street banker taking home a couple of million bucks in a Christmas bonus. The guy who has been digging a ditch all day for $7.50 a hour wonders why some banker on Wall Street is entitled to a fortune especially in a year when that banker lost his company money. And that ditch digger has a point.

As I said, I don't understand the world of Wall Street and never will. But I see all of those zeroes behind the bonuses and wonder if maybe that pay gap isn't something worth discussing. Everyone is clearly not equal. But some are more equal than others. I read that somewhere.