It's not my headline but the that of the Financial Times over an op-ed yesterday by John Gapper. About a week ago the Wall Street Journal put on its first page a defense by Robert Rubin against demands that had not yet quite been made of him simply to accept some responsibility for the Citigroup catastrophe.
But now the FT has made it all explicit. Rubin took home $115 million over nine years for part-time work. How much per hour does that come to? In his role as what the FT calls Citigroup's consigliere Rubin backed the bank's "more risk" strategy that blew up in 2007. The paper suggests that he give back his bonuses for 2006 and 2007 or, better yet, give them to a charity that deals with the dread that Citibank and the other counting houses have unleashed. Not to Carnegie Hall, for example. How about $30 million? That's the FT's suggestion. I'd say more.
It just seems fair that folk who made huge fortunes on their own strategies that collapsed and collapsed tens of thousands of people in their wake should "give something back.