All cards on the table, we admit to having grown weary of Elizabeth Warren’s predictably intractable negative stance on the finance sector. At a some point, Warren’s political campaign to safeguard the American public against the greed of “Big Banks” turned into an orthodox crusade against the financial sector. The whole thing has become so one-note and monotonous that Warren now seems incapable of recognizing anything positive in the industry as a whole. It makes her appear obstinate and unfair, stubborn and angry.
For instance, this is the time of year when many banks disclose bonus and salary changes, reflecting the internal performance of said institutions. And things went very well on Wall Street last year, so it stands to reason that money would be flowing from the payroll department, so of course Elizabeth Warren unleashed a tweetstorm to unfairly criticize the executive compensation of certain bankers.
What a shrill zealot…
.@WellsFargo is about to be sanctioned for running an auto insurance scam that cost Americans millions of dollars. I don’t think that sort of corporate management merits a raise for CEO Tim Sloan. https://t.co/0B3pTzgd98
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) March 15, 2018
Wait. Tim Sloan got a fucking raise?! For real?
In that case, Warren has a point. Wells Fargo is still smoldering from its epic implosion, and Sloan has hardly covered himself in glory since taking over from John Stumpf (whose head we assume remains mounted on a spike in Warren’s office in The Hart Building). And you also have to factor in Sloan’s batshit optimist appearance before Warren’s committee last fall, which felt illogical in the moment before being ultimately undermined by Wells Fargo inevitably admitting that shit was even worse than it thought.
Sloan was supposed to be the cleanup guy, the sin eater. He was supposed to be the keynote speaker on Wells Fargo’s apology tour. That was the gig. It was really never going to matter for him if Wells turned things around quickly. He was there the whole time and he was taking one for the team. If he’d lasted a decade and the bank had demonstrated a sincere, concrete turnaround in the bank’s culture and performance, then he might have dared give himself a nice raise.
But to do it now, less than two years since he took over? That’s waaaaaay too ballsy. And this isn’t about the normal course of doing business. We get that CEOs get raises based on performance, but Wells Fargo isn’t allowed to do normal business yet. It’s PR 101.
So, we assume that Sloan kept his mouth shut, counted his money and cagily let Warren shout into the wind like a socialist banshee?
Wells Fargo & Co. Chief Executive Tim Sloan on Thursday defended a 35 percent gain in his latest compensation package, while describing comments last year by Democratic U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, who had called for his ouster, as “inappropriate.”
“It’s not surprising I disagree with almost everything Elizabeth Warren says. Most of her comments are both ill-informed and inappropriate,” Sloan told reporters after speaking to the Detroit Economic Club.
What are you doing, Tim Sloan? A lot of Wall Street CEOs are ready and allowed to talk shit about Elizabeth Warren and let her know that she needs to back the fuck up off them. You, sir, are not one of those CEOs.
Sloan himself even told the audience that he told the board it would look unseemly if he got a bonus. But a 35% raise seemed “totes cool”? That’s so tone deaf that even Elizabeth Warren is allowed to take a shot.
And going right back at Warren is pretty bitchy and dumb. She can still get him dragged back before the Senate, and we’re not past the point where Republicans like to score populist points by teeing off on Wells Fargo. The Trump Administration has been almost farcically kind to the finance sector, but one good market dive and a Democratic wave in November will almost certainly push Trump to rethink that position with an eye towards 2020.
And we won’t even go into the fact that Wells Fargo is not done admitting everything bad it has done in the last five years.
Hey, Tim? Word of advice? Shut the fuck up.
Wells Fargo CEO defends pay; calls Senator Warren’s criticism ‘inappropriate’
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