More on Morgan Stanley

It appears as if I didn't spend enough time heckling Morgan Stanley's earnings yesterday. The earnings themselves were lackluster and not particularly inspiring so I glossed over them. Furthermore, it was not until later in the day that the real juice was reported by Bloomberg; that the company had set aside 72% of its revenue for employee pay. Morgan Stanley's stock sold off in the morning on the earnings release but then bounced back nicely by the end of the day. I'm curious as to why shareholders are interested in owning a part of a company that is always willing to screw them over to pay its employees excessive compensation. I call it excessive because clearly all that "talent" at Morgan Stanley isn't pulling its weight if the bank is just going to continue to post losses. If the talent was worth the money, then employee comp would be roughly 50% of revenues as it has been historically. Of course, compensation experts argue that Morgan must keep up with the spiraling pay at Goldman. But really? Is Goldman going to hire every single finance executive on the planet? In any event, I suspect that Morgan Stanley is just trying to pay everybody out before the investment bank really starts taking it on the chin on its $17 billion portfolio of commercial real estate. That time bomb is ticking and I'd be trying to get paid before it goes off too.