Pay Czar Caps Cash Salaries at $500,000 for Bailed-Out Automakers, Banks

Fox News/Associated Press ^ | December 11, 2009 | Staff

[MaestroLC]

The Obama administration's pay czar is limiting the cash compensation for executives at companies that received the largest taxpayer bailouts to $500,000.

The 25th through the 100th top earners at Citigroup, GMAC, American International Group and General Motors also must take more than half their compensation in stock, and at least half must be delayed for three or more years, said Kenneth Feinberg, the Treasury Department's Special Master for Executive Compensation.

[Mr. Lucky]

OK, but the financially stable banks have repaid the TARP money and arern't subject to these edicts. Any bank which hasn't been able to repay the money should have been allowed to go down the tubes anyway, in which case the magagement would be unemployed anyway.

I agree with you regarding any company which did not receive government money.

[TChris]

If these were private companies you could make that argument, however, as soon as the government bought even a single stock in these companies, they ceased to be private.

Boloney.

Even then, the prime act of Fascism was to purchase said stock. Even if I agree with all you wrote, it does not change the nature of the evil, only the timing.

[MarMema]

Now this is pretty much exactly what happened with healthcare, when Medicare and Medicaid were born.

But hey, welcome to the new socialist republic of obama.

[MarMema]

Oops, you are right. Fascism, not socialism.

[ravingnutter]

OK, but the financially stable banks have repaid the TARP money and arern't subject to these edicts.

Actually they have been refusing to take repayment of the TARP money from banks....

Here's a true story first reported by my Fox News colleague Andrew Napolitano (with the names and some details obscured to prevent retaliation). Under the Bush team a prominent and profitable bank, under threat of a damaging public audit, was forced to accept less than $1 billion of TARP money. The government insisted on buying a new class of preferred stock which gave it a tiny, minority position. The money flowed to the bank. Arguably, back then, the Bush administration was acting for purely economic reasons. It wanted to recapitalize the banks to halt a financial panic.

Fast forward to today, and that same bank is begging to give the money back. The chairman offers to write a check, now, with interest. He's been sitting on the cash for months and has felt the dead hand of government threatening to run his business and dictate pay scales. He sees the writing on the wall and he wants out. But the Obama team says no, since unlike the smaller banks that gave their TARP money back, this bank is far more prominent. The bank has also been threatened with "adverse" consequences if its chairman persists. That's politics talking, not economics.

Source

Didn't Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner say that it was not the administration's intent to control private companies? Then why is it reportedly reluctant to accept TARP repayments from some banks?

If it has indeed declined to accept $340 million in payments from banks in Louisiana, New York, Indiana and California, the administration is tacitly admitting that it wants to control those banks as well as others that will try to pay back the taxpayers' money they took in the Troubled Asset Relief Program. By refusing repayment, the government can keep the leverage it bought with the bailouts. Banks that still "owe" would not be in position to reject the administration as a "partner."

Source

Thug politics at its finest.

[SunkenCiv]

• For feds, more get 6-figure salaries: Average pay $30,000 over private sector
• House Passes Sweeping Financial Oversight Bill (lets feds break up big risky companies)
• ALERT! Bachmann: STOP Barney Frank's POWER GRAB in the financial sector - AUDIO
• House passes historic financial rules revamp

[happinesswithoutpeace]

/

[taxcontrol]

Sounds like grounds for a lawsuit as there is no grounds for an unconstitutional pay czar to revoke any business agreement or contract.

[elkfersupper]

I wouldn't take on the responsibility for that pittance.

Our fellow citizens have put a bunch of tyrranical assholes in charge.

Looks to me like we have to be or get ready to wait ir out or fight it out.

[elkfersupper]

What makes you think the courts are on the side of liberty?

[CharacterCounts]

Hoax and change.

Hoax and chains.

[Night Hides Not]

And when these companies go under for lack of executive talent the gubmint will wonder why it happened.

The executive talent previously at GM is the reason why they're bankrupt.

The notion that there are only a "handful" of brilliant business minds and corporate chieftains is absolute BS. I see more talent daily on Free Republic than Wall Street and the Ivy League could produce in a decade.

[hinckley buzzard]

Oh yeah, I'm sure the Constitution totally affirms this executive power. Where are the court orders staying this kind of abuse of power?

If G Bush had tried this there would be ten leftwing whorehouses lined up with lawsuits filed in district courts across the country. From the GOP, silence. Crickets chirping in the darkness.

[bert]

They will still receive bonuses paid in stock redeemable after 3 years. What would they do with the cash? Invest it.

They are being spared the effort.

If desperate for cash, they have new collateral

Nothing has changed