Posted on 09/23/2008 8:36:13 PM PDT by Eric Blair 2084
Congress wants Wall Street to feel it where it hurts: the wallet.
The stratospheric pay packages of Wall Street executives have become a lightning rod issue as Congress shapes a $700 billion bailout for financial firms. Proposals circulating on Capitol Hill vary, but they all would impose some limits or approval authority on salaries of executives whose firms seek help.
The moves in Washington mirror the popular outcry — in constituent e-mail messages and postings in the blogosphere — over the prospect of Wall Street’s tarnished titans walking away with tens of millions of dollars a year while taxpayers pick up the bill.
But Wall Street, its lobbyists and trade groups are waging a feverish lobbying campaign to try to fight compensation curbs. Pay restrictions, they say, would sap incentives to hard work and innovation, and hurt the financial sector and the American economy.
“We support the bill, but we are opposed to provisions on executive pay,” said Scott Talbott, senior vice president for government affairs at the Financial Services Roundtable, a trade group. “It is not appropriate for government to be setting the salaries of executives.”
Yet some formal restraint on executive pay seems unavoidable, even sensible, some finance experts and economists said.
Arthur Levitt Jr., a former Wall Street executive as well as a former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, said pay curbs on executives whose firms take part in the bailout were essential for Congressional approval and were reasonable.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Having said that, do you have any idea how brilliant some of these Wall Street CEO's are? Do you think their job is easy?
Anybody can lose a couple of million dollars. It's not hard.
It takes a real genius to lose $45,000,000,000. Some people underestimate how hard that really is. If I gave anyone here $100 Billion dollars in capital and asked you to try to intentionally lose half of it, you couldn't possibly pull it off.
These guys have some real unique skills.
While I do have a hard time with CEO’s who turn a profitable company into begging for government bailouts from taxpayers then collecting millions or billions in bonuses, the government has no right to set salaries.
Compensation should be left up to the stock holders.
I gotta say at this point I’m rooting for a bunch of these SOB thieves to be put into PYITA federal prison for 25 to life.
These guys have some real unique skills.Here's the problem, CEOs get short term bonuses based on factors that can be easily cooked. Why *not* give billions of dollars of high risk loans to homeowners? You get to mark them as profit(leading to a million dollar+ bonus) and when the whole thing collapses the gubment steps in and pays it all off, because the alternative, economic collapse, is untenable.
It's very smart really, from an individual perspective. There are huge societal costs, but them's the breaks.
They have launched an investigation of Fannie, Freddie, AIG, and Lehman - including their execs.
I don’t have a problem with the market setting salaries/bonuses based on perceived talent and value of the CEOs, but if you’re going to ask the Federal Government (you and I) to pay your salary, then it should be up to us to decide your pay.
Sure some of these guys are talented; and some aren’t. And some don’t care (Bear-Stearns’ top dog playing bridge while his company melted down).
And yes, everyone has a bad day or makes a mistake once in a while, but if you or I have a bad day we don’t expect the government to come and bail us out, bonuses and all.
I think if you’re going to behave irresponsibly and get in line for welfare (corporate or individual), your paymaster (the government) has a right to attach all the strings and limits it wants to your pay-out.
The Government has no right to set salaries...unless they are paying the bills for Wall Street.
The Government has no right to tell citizens what they can eat, drink or smoke....unless they are paying the bills for medical care.
If it’s Gubmint money( really taxpayers’ money like you and me), than it falls under the category that our parents gave us when we were children....my house, my rules.
Welcome to Socialism 101.
But I still stand by my original thesis:
It takes a lot of work to lose Billions of dollars. It’s not as easy as it looks. Try doing it intentionally.
If someone screws up they get FIRED.
That will work /sarc.
Yeah, that’s a lesson that was sort of learned with Enron and WorldCom. Give execs pay in stock options and theoretically they only do well when the stock does well.
Unfortunately, the law of unintended consequences leads them to manage the stock price instead of managing the company.
Brewster’s Billions
Oh, cry me a river.
If my tax dollars are going to bail out these firms for screwing up, you can be DAMNED sure that their pay had better be capped.
If these companies want to stick their hands in the taxpayer cookie jar, then they have to play ball.
I hear ya. However I have a few questions:
Q.: Do you really believe that banks made these loans to homeless people sleeping on park benches because they wanted to?
A: No.
Q: Did they take these loans and try to package them and make billions in underwriting fees creating exotic products because of greed.
A: Yes.
Q: Do you think you could lose $100 Billion on purpose if I gave you $200 Billion.
It’s not that easy.
That's how I think of Wall Street bankers while the rest of us are struggling to fill our tanks with gas.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.