“Slashing executive salaries, bonuses and perks at the seven bailed-out companies that gorged most gluttonously at the public trough is emotionally satisfying, but it shouldn’t be,” wrote columnist Eugene Robinson. “It’s like arresting jaywalkers while ignoring the bank robbery that’s happening in broad daylight down the block.” Though he supports the pay caps, Robinson argued that the Obama administration isn’t doing enough to “curb the irresponsible Wall Street practices that led to the financial meltdown — and, if unaddressed, will lead inexorably to the next crisis.”
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32 Comments
“But we will lose our key personnel!”
“I just looked at your results. You don’t HAVE any key personnel!”
The Obama administration’s “pay czar,” Kenneth Feinberg, won’t be able to put out his message if he continues to alienate the news media. :)
I like the idea of spreading out corporate profits over years, rather than annual bonuses and that these profits being ‘after’ everything is paid, including stockholders.
Contracts that allow bonuses should be tied to the long term – i.e. performance is weighted over the long term productivity. If you do good several years, you get a reward – if you fail in some years – you don’t get anything and may even lose the profits you made from good years.
The big pot concept appeals to me, put the bonuses in an escrow type of account.
Agreed. Perhaps give a good paycheck but then allow for a very generous retirement – IF the company is doing well. Encourages both long-term planning and also mentoring and succession planning.
and also mentoring and succession planning.
Good points, I think this would be a way to go, but it’s too logical and might work.
The government and corporations were never go for it. :D
Personally speaking, the amount of pay barely had any effect on how hard I worked, or how much effort I put in. If’s it the bucks that drive these people’s work ethics, maybe better motivated people are required.
The government and corporations
werewill never go for itThe excuse for these big bonuses is that the corporations will lose their key personnel.
You mean the ones who knowingly invested billions in risky securities, hoping they could cash out before the bubble burst? The key personnel who caused their corporations to collapse to the point that they needed to be bailed out? These are the ones we taxpayers are giving bonuses to so they won’t go somewhere else? Hey, I want them to go somewhere else, and I’ve got a destination in mind!
We bailed out compaies who were on the brink of disaster, not just their own disaster but a disaster for the whole country and maybe more. We pumped billions into these corporations so that they could continue doing business, assuming of course that these executives had learned a lesson in the process. The lesson they seemed to have learned that instead of continuing with the business of taking care of other people’s investments, that the US Treasury is their personal piggy bank to shake whenever a few million a year is insufficient to meet their desire for more wealth, and small investors can go to hell.
We’ve now seen what happens when capitalism is left to regulate itself. This recession was caused by the big business community devouring everything they could without producing anything of value for anybody else. If we’re going to have a capitalist system, it needs oversight by somebody other than itself, and since we bailed it out, maybe it should be us who decides who will attempt to keep them honest. We need to regulate, we need laws to save our system from a collapse of monumental proportions, designed by it’s supposedly strongest supporters. And we need to weed out those executives who caused this recession and keep them from doing it all over again! If it takes firing squads, so be it!
We’ve now seen what happens when capitalism is left to regulate itself.
The regulation to control WallStreet or Capitalism have always been in place.
There was too much in ‘cozy’ arrangements and complacency by past administrations to do anything about it.
It’s like with Congressman Barney Frank said there was nothing wrong with Freddie MAC or Fannie MAE, then less than a year later, they both started imploding.
Lots of blame to go around, but government wasn’t doing their job in the first place or we wouldn’t be in this mess.
Reggie,
a lot of the problem was because corporations got big, their executives bought politicians to get bigger, and got their own appointed to regulatory boards. We once had strong legislation that kept businesses from getting that big, but it’s been watered down, rescinded and left unenforced ever since Reagan. When businesses become monopolies or oligarchies who control the legislation that is supposed to control them, we have a problem. We’ve known that ever since 1929. It’s time to fix that problem and split up the corporations that are “too big to let fail.”
I total disagree with action by the government to cut the pay of the listed firms. The government needs to stay out of business. This will backfire on our communism regime.
George,
Take a deep breath and relax. You aren’t making sense.
Jed
Posted October 23, 2009 at 2:54 pm | Permalink
Reggie,
a lot of the problem was because corporations got big, their executives bought politicians to get bigger, and got their own appointed to regulatory boards. We once had strong legislation that kept businesses from getting that big, but it’s been watered down, rescinded and left unenforced ever since Reagan. When businesses become monopolies or oligarchies who control the legislation that is supposed to control them, we have a problem. We’ve known that ever since 1929. It’s time to fix that problem and split up the corporations that are “too big to let fail.”
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Yes, and the party in power in Congress for Oversight for what 30-40 years in Congress was who, clear up until 1993-4?
The problem added to that, is that the Republicans became just as complacent as the Democrats keeping their blinders on.
The American Public is tired of excuses from both sides, they want it fixed.
Reggie,
This isn’t about Democrats and Republicans. This is about businesses that spend millions a week on lobbyists and campaign contributions and perks to legislators who promote their agendas and fund the opponents of those who don’t. That’s way too much power for any business to wield. The ideal vision of capitalism is for many small suppliers to compete on a level field for many customers. Nature seems to have a different idea; that the one who finds a way to cheat will dominate the market and drive out or eat up the competition. If we’re going to keep capitalism, we need to find a way to keep the cheaters at bay and out of the market or give up on the system and try something else.
Do you honestly think corporations and/or business interests are the only one’s spending millions on lobbyists?
Capitalism isn’t the issue. Politics and politicians are.
Jed
Posted October 23, 2009 at 3:44 pm | Permalink
Reggie,
This isn’t about Democrats and Republicans. This is about businesses that spend millions a week on lobbyists and campaign contributions and perks to legislators who promote their agendas and fund the opponents of those who don’t.
=====================
As I said before, it’s about Congress in general.
Congress has the power to change Lobby laws, but are hesitant to do it. You know why, I know why, it is as you said – perks and promotion of personal/political agendas.
The secret lays in the ability of Congress to get their house in order from all sides.
Does anyone on WE Blog want to address health insurance companies’ immunity to anti-trust regulations?
Monkeyhawk
Posted October 23, 2009 at 4:14 pm | Permalink
Does anyone on WE Blog want to address health insurance companies’ immunity to anti-trust regulations?
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That’s what we pay and elect Congress to do.
Oversight, it’s not a new concept.
We should remove the exemption.
Actually I think the goal would be to simply deposit everyones paychecks in the US Treasury account.
Then the holy gubermint can hand our money back out to us as they deem fair.
Remove the exemption and allow for competition. Be interesting to see if that gets in. I don’t think this Government wants the competition.
Figure out why insurance companies get billed $12 for a band-aid while they’re at it.
Rush’s take on taking and giving, we all lose.
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_102309/content/01125114.guest.html
rather than complaining about the ‘power’ of wall street execs and their lobbyists…why not go after the people that are ACCEPTING the lobbyists’s attention, ‘favors’ and cash. The US Congress and US Senate.
If they were honest, and not for sale, the ‘power’ of wall street would be non-existent.
Just like the ‘war on drugs’ will never be won, since there is demand for drugs. Our crooked congress/senate has a demand for money/favors/perks. Both parties are rife with crooks, and as long as they are still there, the lobbyists and big business will have power.
“Raptor” suggests –
“…why not go after the people that are ACCEPTING the lobbyists’s attention, ‘favors’ and cash.”
The easiest way to achieve that is public funding of campaigns. No donations. No PACs. No fund-raisers.
Every office has a budget for primary and general election campaigns based on media costs and historical records. (We get a lot of television in Kansas since it’s cheap. In Los Angeles or Philadelphia, congressional races aren’t dependent on electronic media.)
If it were the taxpayers paying for campaign costs the elected officials might be beholden to ‘em for a change.
Yeah, there’s potential for abuse. But there could be, y’know, oversight.
Monkeyhawk: I was on hand for an election where a Prime Minister was only allowed to spend $60,000.000 for his seat in Parliament and his, or any other legitmate/recognized party, up to $18 million to campaign in 305 districts. They can only spend 60 cents per voter up to a $60,000.00 maximum and whatever you raise will be matched by the government up to that figure. You raise $30,000.00 you get $30,000.00 you raise $50.00 you get $50.00, no unions, no companies can donate and personal donations are limited to $500.00. They also have no K St. lobbyists so elected Members of Parlaiment are beholding to the electorate only. All Cabinet Members come from the ranks of the House so no outside suggestions to-wards a specific bent or interest in those posts are evident and I think air time is given equally to the legitimate people running, but I’m not sure. Didn’t the total bill for the Oval Office expensed by both sides in primaries and the election, get to $1 billion? Darn socialists again, they actually think that the money we spend must leave the electoral/governance process open to corruption.
So will the unions at GM also have to take a pay cut? Seems to me that 25.00 a hours would be plenty.
You know if I dropped my cell phone, cable, water connection (I can dig a well), sold my car and got up 2 hours earlier and bicycled to work, that I could take a pay cut too. Probably 8.00 an hour would do me just fine.
I sure hope the guvment comes in and declares that I make to much, because if I make more then I need to live as shown above, then that would just make me greedy.
You know if I dropped my cell phone, cable, water connection (I can dig a well), sold my car and got up 2 hours earlier and bicycled to work, that I could take a pay cut too. Probably 8.00 an hour would do me just fine.
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Why don’t you do all that stuff anyway, and it will be like getting a big fat pay raise, something close to 8 dollars an hour. Would be an extra 250 dollars a week.
What is this country? Where the government takes our money (or just prints it) and buys controlling interest in major industries at fire sale prices? Where they bail out companies that should be bankrupt, but then go ahead and set them up for failure, chasing away the talent by slashing salaries, by who knows what authority? Where the government attempts to control media access based on how well they toe the administration line.
A country that has lost its way.
One that needs set straight in 2010.
“So will the unions at GM also have to take a pay cut?”
WHY cut the pay of people who actually DO something? These execs don’t do anything but sit on their butts and focus on the stock price at the end of the day. Get their a–ses in the wind too and they might care about saving these companies.
If we could send the corporate elitist to countries we compete with, they could wreck their economy and we could rise from the ashes.
Drive them out of America!
How nice to have on your resume, CEO of AIG, oversaw the bursting of our speculative bubble.
Salary Req. 100 mil.
Kia,
“Figure out why insurance companies get billed $12 for a band-aid while they’re at it.”
That one is fairly easy. Hospitals are charged with caring for pretty much anybody who walks or is carried in the door. The law requires it as well as medical ethics. As this includes people who don’t have insurance and can’t afford to pay, the hospital overcharges your insurance on things like bandaids and aspirin to make up the loss. The insurance companies go along with it. So you see that your premiums are already paying for the care of the uninsured, and they’re doing it in the least efficient ways for the most difficult type of care.
If everybody had healthcare coverage and could go to their family practitioner when problems first crop up, the problems are easier to treat and the outcomes are better than when they get put off until they have to go to the ER. This is why the healthcare system is in crisis and needs some kind of coverage for everybody. I believe a single-payer plan would cause the least problems for both the patients and hospitals, and the insurance companies could go peddle some other kind of insurance scheme to the gullible, say liability coverage on all those radioactive cell phones or something, and everybody from Senators on down would be covered just like you and I are. And if Senators and Bill Gates are covered by the universal plan the rest of us get, you can rest assured that you will be receiving the same level of care that they are, because they won’t accept less.
Sursum,
In Cuba, if you’re running for office, you go post yhour platform on a post at the center of the town plaza. You make a speech along with the rest of the candidates, campaign over! The people go vote. The few who didn’t read your platorm have to fly blind. Most of them do read them all and get in heated dicussions about politics!
No campain committee, no treasurer, no money spent on advertizing or straw polls or spin doctors; you get up, say your piece, the other guy says his the people go vote. Done!
Of course if you tried something like that here, all those consultants and pollmeisters and spin doctors et al would have to get real jobs, and those are scarce items these days. Rare as hens teeth!
Phant,
“If we could send the corporate elitist to countries we compete with, they could wreck their economy and we could rise from the ashes.”
The problem with that is that a corporate CEO would probably make a hell of a drug lord. The skill set is indentical except for training them in the use of automatic weapons- a couple weekends on the firing range, and they’ll be busy dirupting our lives, our children and the econmy in nothin’ flat!