Big bonuses seen leading to current Wall Street scandals

From NBCNews: With banks and brokers under fire for everything from rate-rigging to multibillion-dollar trading losses, observers are beginning to ask if the pay structures on Wall Street are to blame for the current rash of financial wrongdoings.

Last week JPMorgan, the largest U.S. bank by assets, said a botched trade in its London office has cost the company $5.8 billion, with another $1.7 billion in losses possible as it works to “unwind” the failed trade. And in late June Barclays paid $453 million to regulators in the U.K and the U.S. to settle accusations that it had tried to influence a benchmark interest rate that affects the price at which consumers and companies across the world borrow funds.

The rate-rigging scandal at Barclays is expected to involve other big global banks and be one of the largest to hit the banking sector since the financial crisis.  Yet little has been done to tackle the incentive problems at big U.S. banks since the crisis struck four years ago, said Paul Hodgson, a senior research associate at GMI Ratings, a company that analyzes publicly traded corporations….

http://marketday.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/07/18/12793197-big-bonuses-seen-leading-to-current-wall-street-scandals?lite