Posted on 06/10/2009 8:45:42 AM PDT by reaganaut1
The Obama administration on Wednesday appointed a compensation czar who will have broad discretion to set the pay for 175 top executives at seven of the nation’s largest companies, which received hundreds of billions of dollars in federal assistance to survive.
The mandate given to the new compensation official, Kenneth R. Feinberg, a well-known Washington lawyer, reflects the federal government’s increasingly intrusive role in the corporate affairs of deeply troubled companies. From his nondescript office in Room 1310 of the Treasury building, Mr. Feinberg will set the salaries and bonuses of some of the top corporate executives in America, including Kenneth Lewis, the chief executive of Bank of America; Vikram Pandit, the head of Citigroup, and Fritz Henderson, the chief executive of General Motors.
The compensation of executives at some of the companies receiving aid provoked a firestorm of political outrage earlier this year. In revising an earlier proposal to set pay limits, the Obama administration has decided to take an approach that will leave the success or failure of the effort to curtail high compensation at the assisted companies in the hands of Mr. Feinberg. (Mr. Feinberg himself will not receive any government compensation.)
Instead of deciding compensation levels himself, the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, decided to appoint Mr. Feinberg, a well-known mediator whose last high-profile assignment was putting a financial value on the lives of victims of the 9/11 attack, to decide the pay for the top 25 executives at the American International Group, Citibank, Chrysler, Chrysler Credit, General Motors, GMAC and Bank of America.
For 80 other financial institutions that have received federal assistance, Mr. Feinberg will develop the overall compensation structure, but without setting the exact level of pay.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I was looking for the satire label. This isn’t, is it?
The Boy King consolidates his power. Soon it will be a real tyranny we’re living in, not a “soft” tyranny.
These ‘czars’ are not accountable to Congress (the people). They are only accountable to Bozo.
Today is slap an obama voter day
If this is a duplicate submission is there a way to point that out so comments are merged? Or do we wait for the moderators to catch it?
The first American dictator....many of his fellow African Americans are certainly proud that he is drawing American blood....
`czar’: short for commissar. 20+ and counting, and accountable only to Zero.
ML/NJ
another czar. another unaccountable dictator.
I am sure one company run by Dems will be able to have higher exec pay than one run by Repubs.
You just know that. We have no rule of law in this country.
I can only hope to see 175 retirements in the next few months.
Sadly, "We" will lose.
We've been fighting this crap for almost fifty years yet it still is overtaking us.
WHAT ABOUT PAY RECEIVED FROM THE TAXPAYER TO FAILING CONGRESSMEN, SENATORS, TEACHERS, ALL GOVERNMENT WORKERS?
I’m getting very tired of this “Czar” $hit. When are the courts going to limit (or, more properly and better yet, eliminate) the authority of these unelected, unconfirmed and unaccountable dictators?
I’m just waiting to see what the Czar of Czars and his Keystone Kops will do when there’s 12% unemployment (admitted, that is, as U6, the traditional measure, is already near 16%) and 1/4 of the population goes John Galt. WTF are they going to do? Mass arrests, internment camps, WHAT?
The country is falling apart - just wait until the first failure of a Treasury auction (i.e. where the Fed has to buy the entire issue or nearly all of it, as no one else wants the bonds), THEN you’ll see massive problems. Yet all that the Czar of Czars (Capo di Tutti Capi, in a language closer to ours than Russian) can do is go for $20,000 dinners with his anti-American wife, when he’s not further nationalizing companies, proposing confiscatory taxes, violating contract law and just plain old lying his arse off, that is.
The Founders must be doing about 10,000 RPM in their graves, right about now.
Weren’t the czars the people in power before the Russian revolution? I think it is time for another revolution here.
This will be another incentive to move operations out of this country and into more favorable business climates.
I find it interesting - in the Twilight Zone sense of that word - the Pravda sought fit a couple of weeks ago to warn us of the perils of Socialism - PRAVDA, for crying out loud! What a friggin' joke - we vanquish the Soviet Empire with no shots fired, merely by spending a modest amount on defense for 8 or so years (7% or so of GNP, not really a lot), and these jokers in power are RUSHING us, PUSHING, CAJOLING, FORCING us toward that system as fast as possible.
I'm beginning to wonder if I died and went to Hell - but I know that it can't be because I still have my guns (and yeah, I know, these freaks in DC are working on that - well, I'm from Texas: Come and take them).
When is CONGRESS going to see that they aren’t in control?
Glenn Beck said yesterday that there are 16 czars reporting directly to “O”. WHY is NO ONE in DC screaming about this?
Almost every decision made by this administation so far is a softball to hit out of the park by an actual freedom loving conservative candidate in 2012. Time to cap the size of government and send the Czars back to Russia where they can only be seen from an island off Alaska.
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