Professor William Black:

You do not need $1 billion to incentivise disastrous behaviour. Seriously, in the lower ranks, the bonuses would often be in the $500 range. It must be remembered that we are talking about people who are pretty close to the minimum wage. If we look at the United Kingdom and the payment protection insurance, PPI, abuses, this is often incentivising people who are pretty much the working poor, and that can be done with just a few hundred dollars. By the way, they do not always do it just with money. In some places, if someone did not sell enough, they literally put a cabbage on their desk. It is the insult in the UK context of being considered a cabbage head.