10-25-2009, 03:50 AM
Quote:... but to prevent poorly designed executive rewards from encouraging risk, thus risking another potential explosion of the banking system.Although, the salary/bonus system is not what caused the "collapse" of the financial sector. This is a progressive witch hunt/smoke screen to distract people from the mess that the government made in the first place pressing banks into making subprime loans for people who barely had the means to pay them back. Mortgaged backed securities and derivatives were a very bad idea, and whomever thought it up should get a wall of shame, however it had nothing to do with pay. Executive pay is a hot button that progrssives like to press to infuriate the "every man" who is not also earning multi millions. And, I've cited examples in my past where software I've written has raked in mulit-millions, but my share was a salary and long hours and very little sleep while I was doing most of the work, and then very little credit after the software was published. But, you know, I'd rather have the world a place where I am free to negotiate with my employer for a fatter slice of the pie based on my merit, than a world where the government comes in and takes the whole pie and distributes it as *it* pleases.
You *can* convince me that the executives who led us down the merry road of disaster (including the current and former treasury folks, and including Alan Greenspan) deserve some payback, however that is already done in that they got sacked from their jobs. Now, the government is meddling in what it shouldn't. For example, the executive pay of the newly hired CIO at AIG (not the guy who made the mess... he was sacked), was 1$ plus bonuses for fixing the mess. Now the government is robbing him of the agreed upon bonus.
How is it that the government can make a private contract null and void? This is a violation of the heart of jurisprudence, contracts and torts. Our system of freedoms is based upon our ability to make contractual agreements between private entities, and then be bound by tort to them if they are fair and not fraud. But, if the government can step in and obliterate them, then who knows whether we are bound any more by laws or by Whitehouse Czars.