Something I've noticed is that, unlike 3.5, Pathfinder doesn't award cohorts treasure. Therefore, you have to spend your money to equip the cohort. This balances things in my opinion. As a DM I would consider not properly equipping a cohort to be "cruelty" and would a) reduce leadership score and b) encourage the cohort to leave the PC. Then the player would have a poor leadership score and couldn't attract another cohort or at least a low level cohort, and that would make the feat more useless than skill focus (climb).
