Wall Street Salaries

We, as a capitalist society, have entrusted the various Wall Street professionals (bankers, hedge funds, private equity, research analysts, etc) with the incredibly difficult yet important task of managing our nation's resources. Everyday, their collective decisions determine what businesses are good, which in turn determines jobs, products available to consumer, technological advancements, and how much debt society can handle (to name a few).

Given this immense responsibility and the difficult nature of the task, we need to attract the most intelligent people to these jobs. Many are attracted by the challenge and the responsibility. But we expect a lot from these people, so they must be rewarded too.

And here is where the challenges for society begin - 1) how do you attract the intelligent people who are excited by the challenge, responsibility, and money, but not let money be the driving force? 2) These issues are so complicated that you need to attract the brightest minds - who is left to understand the issues enough to know when those brightest minds fail? How do you fire them when they do fail? 3) How do you avoid corrupting the process with regulation?