Free Republic

your brains or your signature will be on this resignation letter. That's what Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner might as well be saying to the next corporate CEOs he intends to muscle out of their posts. Bloomberg reports Treasury's highest-ranking tax evader said he is gearing up to turn senior management and boards of directors at banks that require "exceptional" assistance from the U.S. government into roadkill. "If in the future, banks need exceptional assistance in order to get through this, then we will make sure that assistance comes," while ensuring taxpayers are protected, Geithner said today in an interview on...

On the heels of the resignation of General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner, the Service Employees International Union is urging President Barack Obama to oust Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis. “It defies logic, common-sense, and responsible governance to punish the auto industry while letting financial institutions off the hook,” SEIU President Andy Stern said, announcing his call for Lewis’s job Tuesday. The SEIU has begun circulating an online petition, calling on the administration to “show the door to CEO Ken Lewis.” “Firing GM's CEO is a positive step towards restructuring a broken industry,” Stern said. “But the Obama Administration needs...

New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is in discussions with Rep. Barney Frank and other lawmakers on a plan to tie Wall Street pay to the long-term performance of the firms. Mr. Frank (D., Mass.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, and other prominent Democrats appear to back such a plan, though no legislation has been introduced. Barney Frank "We plan to put laws into effect, no question," said Mr. Frank. "We have to address this 'heads I win, tails I break even' issue." Compensation became a big issue in late 2008 when the government was forced to...

One of the things liberals love to do when making shrills against conservatives is to claim that they are backed by big business corporate capitalist elitists. Conservatives they say are interested in advancing the agenda of the rich against the poor. Conservatives are champions of the rich while they crap all over the poor. They only want to protect the privileged and elite. They give tax cuts to the super rich by cutting programs and putting our nation in debt. Also according to liberals, by electing Barack Obama, we would undo this and require that the rich pay their share....

The U.S. financial system is like a heart attack patient. Joe America (financial system) ate fast food (spent more than he made) at every meal, didn’t exercise (ran up debt), and worked late (didn’t save) at the office 6 days per week for the last 30 years. This ultimately led to a massive heart attack (worldwide financial crisis) and the patient has been kept alive through tremendous doses of drugs (interest rate cuts, Federal Reserve injections) and quadruple bypass surgery (bank, insurance company and car company bailouts) to keep the blood (money) flowing to the heart. The Chief Surgeon (President...

While it may look superficially similar to the recent implosions of such investment giants as Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Lehman, the takeover and bailout of AIG is quite different, and means that the market is entering the next and even more dangerous phase. What is driving the fall of AIG - and potential government losses that may far, far exceed the $85 billion bailout announced late on September 16th - is not mortgages or real estate (directly), but fears that AIG's huge, global credit-default swap positions will unravel. The $62 trillion dollar credit derivatives market is 50 times the...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Top executives at major businesses last year made as much money in one day of work on the job as the average worker made over the entire year, according to a report released on Wednesday. Chief executive officers from the nation's biggest businesses averaged nearly $11 million in total compensation, according to the 14th annual CEO compensation survey released jointly by the Institute for Policy Studies based in Washington and United for a Fair Economy, a national organization based in Boston. At the same time, workers at the bottom rung of the U.S. economy received the first...

President Bush yesterday said there is a growing "income inequality" gap between rich and poor Americans, and told companies they should rethink the giant compensation packages they offer top executives. The markedly populist message, a divergence from the past, in which Mr. Bush has accused critics of practicing class warfare, was all the more noteworthy given his venue -- a speech at Federal Hall in New York, in the middle of Wall Street, the capital of capitalism. But the president called for conservative market-based answers, including demanding that Congress renew trade-promotion authority, which allows him to negotiate trade agreements then...

Why our CEOs are warming to Kyoto. (Editor's note: We reintroduce today the Potomac Watch column from Washington. It will appear on Fridays and be written by Kimberley Strassel, a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. She joined the Journal in 1994 and has worked as a reporter in Europe and as an editor and editorial writer in New York.) Washington this week officially welcomed the newest industry on the hunt for financial and regulatory favors. Big CarbonCap may have the same dollar-sign agenda as Big Oil or Big Pharma, but don't expect Nancy Pelosi to admit to...

In an era when our media and even our education system exalt emotions, while ignoring facts and logic, perhaps we should not be surprised that so many people explain economics by "greed." Today there are adults -- including educated adults -- who explain multimillion-dollar corporate executives' salaries as being due to "greed." Think about it: I could become so greedy that I wanted a fortune twice the size of Bill Gates' -- but this greed would not increase my income by one cent. If you want to explain why some people have astronomical incomes, it cannot be simply because of...

WASHINGTON - Chief executives of 10 major corporations urged Congress on Monday to require limits on greenhouse gases this year, contending voluntary efforts to combat climate change are inadequate. The call for immediate action came on the eve of President Bush's State of the Union address in which he is expected to reiterate that the industry on its own is making progress in curtailing the growth of heat-trapping emissions without the need of government intervention. But the executives and leaders of four major environmental organizations said in a letter to Bush that mandatory emissions caps are needed to reduce the...

When I was a kid, I shoveled snow to make a few dollars. One time, a friend and I did a driveway for a grumpy old neighbor. We pooped out before all the snow was gone, and when we asked to be paid, the old man refused. "You don't finish, I don't pay," he said. We skulked off. But those were the rules of the marketplace. You wanna get paid, you gotta do the job. Simple enough, right? Apparently not in corporate America, where CEOs regularly leave their companies in no better shape than when they got there, yet walk...

Talking to a colleague recently, the subject of CEO salaries arose. Once again, I gained great insight into the liberal mind. He started by stating his astonishment at some figures. “In England,” he began, “the difference between the salary of a CEO and an average worker is 24 percent. Here, it’s 416 percent (unconfirmed, but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt)! That’s ridiculous.” Knowing industry is far more ambitious and less burdened here than in England – and finding myself more and more these days in the role as a defender of free market capitalism – I retorted,...

the only way you can keep corporate America purring is to give CEOs compensation packages that are 187 times higher than what's earned by the average worker in their companies, then go ahead. Do it. Let market forces reign. But if the ever-increasing levels of extremely high executive pay are largely a case of the CEOs having their way with timid boards of directors paying little or no attention to performance criteria, stop it immediately. Few things could be more damaging to the free-market system. There are three reasons: One is that dishing out millions upon millions of dollars to...

Not only were neither Saddam Hussein nor Iraq mentioned in a film about the Iraq-Kuwait war, but the Manchurian corporation's technicians rewire the brains of the abducted U.S. soldiers with false memories of al-Qaida-type jihadists so that they will lay the blame for their terrorist acts on an innocent Muslim jihadist. Why don't the movies have plausible, real-world villains anymore? One reason is that a plethora of stereotype-sensitive advocacy groups, representing everyone from hyphenated ethnic minorities and the physically handicapped to Army and CIA veterans, now maintain liaisons in Hollywood to protect their images. The studios themselves often have "outreach...

For all my conservative friends: Anyone who has ever lived in the Boston area is probably familiar with the Boston Phoenix, a far-left newspaper. Its Aug. 26, 2005, issue had an article decrying the fact that some companies give to conservative causes (pp. 18-19). It then listed the companies & their products, warning their readers not to buy these products. I’m using their article for the exact opposite purpose – to get people to buy from these companies. The owners/founders/CEOs of these companies contribute large sums to support conservative causes and candidates. Products made by these companies are: AdvantEdge Ensure...

Many articles have been written about the phenomenon of “outsourcing”—the practice of sending work needed within a company to be performed outside of the company. More recently, the word has become synonymous with “offshoring”—the practice of sending the work to be done by lower-paid workers overseas, often in third-world or emerging countries such as Mexico, China, and India. These phenomena have been going on for some time—one of the first industries to be moved outside of the United States has been textiles. Indeed, while garment manufacturing was first sent to low-cost locales, there was some outcry over the growth of...

Many articles have been written about the phenomenon of “outsourcing”—the practice of sending work needed within a company to be performed outside of the company. More recently, the word has become synonymous with “offshoring”—the practice of sending the work to be done by lower-paid workers overseas, often in third-world or emerging countries such as Mexico, China, and India. These phenomena have been going on for some time—one of the first industries to be moved outside of the United States has been textiles. Indeed, while garment manufacturing was first sent to low-cost locales, there was some outcry over the growth of...

This is getting to be a habit, albeit mostly a pleasant one. The government revised its measure of first quarter economic growth again yesterday to 3.8%, up from its previous estimate of 3.5%, which was above its initial estimate of 3.1%. You may recall that the initial estimate inspired a great deal of fretting that the current economic expansion was heading south. But the 3.8% figure -- despite high oil prices -- matches the rate for the fourth quarter of 2004 and means that growth has now averaged close to a 4% annual rate for eight consecutive quarters going back...

A 9-0 Supreme Court rebuke ought to be a teaching moment. So it is amazing to behold that -- notwithstanding the unanimous recent reversal of its 2002 Arthur Andersen conviction -- the Justice Department may well make the same mistake all over again. We're referring to the news that Justice may indict the entire KPMG accounting firm for obstruction of justice and the marketing of legally questionable tax shelters. As Andersen's fate made clear, an indictment against a corporation is usually a death sentence, whatever the ultimate legal outcome.... The purpose of criminal law, we had thought, is to punish...