03-27-2009, 12:15 PM
Quote:I don't have a problem with the government regulating a thing, like a "Credit Default Swap". What has me more worried is the rumbling in DC related to corporate salary structures. It would be appalling government to go into a corporation and tell it that its pay structure is wrong, even though we may not like it, it should not be some bureaucrats role to tell corporations how to be structured. That's the board of directors and the stockholders job. And, also chilling is the bureaucrats pushing punitive legislation targeted at taxing certain people at over 90%. Is that not obviously unconstitutional use of targeted taxation? It's a good thing Congress doesn't wield a cadre of brown shirts to go beat up those AIG executives and fire bomb their houses.
I think you are underestimating the power of these big financials.
You are scared of anything a government might do but when a bank does things with great consequences you dismiss it as 'their own business because we live in a free country'.
When a bank is so big that it bankruptcy would mean a huge crash of the economy, in other words, it opperates without risks and can, as you say it, decide its own salary structure....even when they get their money directly from the people of the US, we have a company that is just as powerful as a federal state. It is probably even fair to say that eg AIG is more powerful than many of this worlds countries (meaning that if eg AIG would completely crash the effect on the world would probably bigger than when eg moldavia would dissapear from the face of the earth.
I think federal goverments should be able to influence at least the salary structure of these companies....especially after a bail out. Higher pay and bonusses of these managers that we are talking about has no proven possitive effect on the business of a company (exept for the psychological effect of rising stock prices because shareholders think that a comnpany that pays a lot for their managers is apparantly a serious company).