With the ghost of a smile on his face

Right after 486g I have recently been attending a night course on practical finance as applied in investment banking. Although many of the financial concepts are well over my head, it is interesting to be thrown into the deep end of financial modelling and appraisal. One of the consistent topics brought up is compensation in this industry. The speaker is often quite blunt in regards to the broken nature of the program, and self-beneficial deals often undertaken. At one point he went so far as stating that having properly done his job and saved his company over a hundred million dollars had been a mistake, because they avoided a deal that would have paid him many times more than his annual base salary. This was said with a tine of sarcasm but the point remains.

Nevertheless despite the acknowledged problems with current models he consistently explains that finding successful alternatives is often more expensive, alienating, and time consuming. The question remaining is that although it is generally acknowledged that bonus structures undeniably contributed to the recent economic crisis, what is the alternative?

Air France: No Way Down

Musical influence for this post. Title says it all, no way down. Is there no way to bring down excess in this industry?