"Good job, Comrade!"
Pay Czar Doubts Cuts Will Make Bankers Leave
By LOUISE STORY
Published: October 22, 2009
Kenneth R. Feinberg, the government’s special master for compensation, has spent nearly five months studying pay packages at some of the nation’s largest banks. But ask him if bankers and traders earn far too much money, and he demurs.
“I wouldn’t begin to say how much money you should make on Wall Street,” Mr. Feinberg said in an interview last week, as he prepared to slash pay for the top 25 earners at seven firms that received significant government aid. “I’ve never worked on Wall Street. I don’t claim to know the ethos of Wall Street.”
For Mr. Feinberg, the process of cutting pay underscored the widening divide between Wall Street and the rest of America, where even a fraction of a banker’s pay seems like riches to many people.
“A Wall Street executive will say to me: ‘Mr. Feinberg, last year I made $30 million. This year, you’re whacking me down, you’re reducing me to $10 million. How can you do that?’ ” Mr. Feinberg said. “On the other side of the argument, you hear people say ‘$10 million — that’s outrageous.’ ”
Pay experts said the plan, which emerged Wednesday, could lead to the departure of the very executives needed to return the firms to health, a prerequisite to repaying taxpayer support. Bankers regaled Mr. Feinberg with similar concerns in the months it took to prepare his order, but he said he thought they would be left with enough pay to persuade them to remain in their jobs.
This is an excerpt.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/23/business/23feinberg.html?em
from (at best) a half a waitress sandwich
The end result is what was desired in the first place. Everything that happens in politics is foreseen and intended. They planned this very well.
"Good job, Comrade!"