Obama Caps Executive Pay Bailed Out Companies
My Way News reports:
President Barack Obama on Wednesday imposed $500,000 caps on senior executive pay for the most distressed financial institutions receiving federal bailout money, saying Americans are upset with “executives being rewarded for failure.”
Obama announced the dramatic new government intervention into corporate America at the White House, with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner at his side. The president said the executive-pay limits are a first step, to be followed by the unveiling next week of a sweeping new framework for spending what remains of the $700 billion financial industry bailout that Congress created last year.
Obama clearly doesn’t think much of the free market. If he did, he would’ve let customers deal with the senior executive pay issue instead of intervening in this brutal manner.
Having said that, these companies sold themselves to the government. They screwed up after which they begged the government for help. They can’t complain that the government than treats those companies as if they were part of the government bureaucracy. If they didn’t want government interference in executive pay, they should not have accepted tax payers’ dollars. This is what happens when you make a deal with the devil; he’ll take your soul and everything else you cherish.
This website uses IntenseDebate comments, but they are not currently loaded because either your browser doesn't support JavaScript, or they didn't load fast enough.
Comments are closed.
PoliGazette Comments Policy
PoliGazette encourages comments from all viewpoints, especially those that disagree.
Comments submitted must, however, adhere to the following standards. Comments that violate
these standards may be edited or deleted without notice at the sole discretion of the editors.
Commenters who repeatedly or egregiously violate these standards or who attempt to argue
publicly with editors regarding the comments policy may be banned from commenting further.
(1) Comments should address the substantive content of the post. Comments that repeatedly
or blatantly misrepresent the content of the post or of others' comments are not welcome. Comments that
respond to something other than which the contributor or commenter may have said are irrelevant and should
not be posted.
(2) Comments should avoid vulgarity as well as racial, ethnic, religious, or sexual bigotry.
(3) Comments should not personally attack the character, personal integrity, or professional
reputation of any PoliGazette contributor or of other commenters.
(4) Comments should reflect the contributions of the commenters themselves and should not
include extensive cut-and-paste reproductions of others' words except insofar as necessary to supplement
the commenter's own arguments. Link spam, trackback spam, and propaganda spam will be instantly deleted.
(5) Public figures are considered open to all substantive criticism of their policies and statements.
Comments that present objectively false factual information about public figures (i.e. "Obama is a Muslim") or
that attack public figures by attacking their families are not welcome. Comments that merely repeat
slogans for or against a candidate without engaging in substantive comment are not welcome.
Questions or challenges to these policies or their application should be directed to the editors
by email only.
Rather than setup elaborate rules for executive compensation – that most executives will probably find ways around anyways – we should have nationalized the gigantic banks that were going under. And then once we got things in order, re-privatize them. In that scenario you wouldn’t have billions in bonuses, millions in executive pay and hundreds of millions spent on things like buying stadium names.
You’re exactly right Michael, you can’t expect tax payers to dish out cash to save your ass and then expect to be rewarded for it.
Although I’d have to disagree with the idea that the market can really regulate senior executive pay. These gigantic corporations are stocked with board members who seem interested in nothing but generous pay for themselves and their friends in executive management. Ralph Nader had some great ideas about how to force these companies to be more accountable to their stock holders rather than these sycophantic boards.