Breaking News - Obama's Pay Czar orders pay cuts

[uriah]

No kidding. I think the pay cut isn't enough, personally. These clowns will still end up with millions of dollars in bonuses this year.

It kills me how people say "but these are the most talented people!" Talented at what? At running a company into the ground and then relying on TAXPAYER money to bail them out? They're lucky they still have JOBS, and they should be thankful they are going to earn WELL OVER the salary of the average citizen who bailed their asses out this year.

You don't reward failure. Bringing the entire financial sector and subsequently, the entire WORLD to its knees because of your own greed is a HUGE FAIL.

But yeah, let's pay these jackasses millions of dollars. Give me a break!

+rep I have yet to work anywhere that will continue to allow me to work for them if I am not profitable to the company. Much less give me bonuses and raises for my lack of production.

However, I do feel Washington itself could lead by example and impose similar policies on it's self after all our government is also operating on a deficit.

 

[NoDrama]

Guess how the government limits YOUR pay? Taxes.

 

[ilkhan]

We should have let them fail.
We would have been better off in the long run.
Next time they will not get away with it.
Mark my words there will be a next time.
Probably right after the next presidential election.

 

[Green Cross]

Guess how the government limits YOUR pay? Taxes.

Obama blames rich white people for poor folks problems, whereas I thank them for giving me a job, but then I'm not a communist or a racist.

Hey maybe instead of cutting top executive pay, why don't we break up these $multi-billion companies what are supposedly "too big to fail". I mean the Billions that would have been saved - if Clinton and his treasury secretary Robert Rubin (who went on to make a large fortune in citigroup after the Clinton signed the laws allowing bigger banking..) it seems to me this is far more important than the measly $millions the executives got paid.

Isn't this all for show?

 

[$thaghettogreenthumb$]

first off...bush had over 40 sumn czars by the time he finished office, so shut the fuck up lol


second, the executives will take the pay cuts because the company THEY work for, its not the other way around, the company DOESNT work for them, received bailout money, hence no bailout money = no company, no company = no executive position, no executive position = no job for the punk ass executive (who couldnt be an honest business man in the first place and continued to rob the system until it was unsalvageable without government funds.)

so dont be alarmed when u hear that popping noise...its jus your head coming out of your ass

where were you when bush and his whole shit whole administration were bleeding this country dry???


fuck you n have a nice day

 

[Green Cross]

first off...bush had over 40 sumn czars by the time he finished office, so shut the fuck up lol


second, the executives will take the pay cuts because the company THEY work for, its not the other way around, the company DOESNT work for them, received bailout money, hence no bailout money = no company, no company = no executive position, no executive position = no job for the punk ass executive (who couldnt be an honest business man in the first place and continued to rob the system until it was unsalvageable without government funds.)

so dont be alarmed when u hear that popping noise...its jus your head coming out of your ass

where were you when bush and his whole shit whole administration were bleeding this country dry???


fuck you n have a nice day

You're on the wrong thread, and Bush isn't president.

 

[Green Cross]

Here's what a Leftist looks like when presented with cold hard facts lol

 

[NoDrama]

..............................................

Isn't this all for show?

Give this man a Prize!!

 

[londonfog]

You're on the wrong thread, and Bush isn't president.

yeah but he phucked this place up good...or do you think he was a good POTUS

 

[Wavels]

As the following article points out, the current problem with executive pay was created by congress.
With well meaning intentions they tweaked the compensation system and as a result warped corporate behavior.
Perverse incentives were instituted.
And these jackasses are going to make it even worse.
Spectacular foolishness!



Washington's Plans May Result in Even Higher Executive Pay

In 1992, Congress intervened in corporate compensation and messed things up. Now it's the White House's turn.


Executive pay has emerged, once again, as a major issue in Washington. This week Treasury and the Federal Reserve announced new regulations designed to oversee and limit executive pay at thousands of financial institutions. This is deeply ironic, because today's pay woes are the direct result of prior government intervention.
In 1992, Congress decided it would use the tax code to "improve" (i.e., reduce) executive compensation in publicly traded companies. Its vehicle was the Budget Reconciliation Act, a key provision of which became Section 162(m) of the Internal Revenue Code.
Noting that executive compensation levels had received negative "scrutiny and criticism" from the public, the new law targeted what it called "excessive employee remuneration." It did so by limiting the ability of public companies to deduct executive compensation for its top employees unless the compensation was paid out in a form that Congress found acceptable. Salary was bad. Stock options were tax favored.
Specifically, corporations were barred by law from deducting as a normal business expense any salary payments of over $1 million. Stock options, however, qualified for the corporate tax deduction without limitation. Much maligned today, stock options then were said to be "performance based" and therefore exempt from the new tax rules.
The new tax law immediately led to a tectonic shift in the way CEOs and other top U.S. executives were paid. Stock and stock options became the dominant feature of executive compensation packages.
The impetus for changing the executive compensation laws back then was exactly the same as it is today. Politicians wanted pay lower and wanted to change the executive compensation model to "fix" the risk-taking proclivities of top managers.
In 1992, the government thought that managers were too risk averse. Stock options were seen as the magic bullet for making managers act more aggressively in the shareholders' interests. Today, many in Congress are blaming U.S. executives for causing the financial crisis precisely by engaging in "excessive" risk-taking. What they fail to mention is that it was Congress's own tinkering with the tax code that led to the very compensation packages that incentivized the risk-taking.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke asserted this week that "compensation practices at some banking organizations have led to misaligned incentives and excessive risk-taking, contributing to bank losses and financial instability." Mr. Bernanke promised that the government "is working to ensure that compensation packages appropriately tie rewards to longer-term performance and do not create undue risk for the firm or the financial system."
Other government interference has made the executive compensation problem even worse. A provision in the 1992 tax law required that executives meet certain "objective" performance measures in order to qualify for incentive-based (tax deductible) pay. In the scramble to come up with objective metrics on which to base executive pay, cottage industry "executive compensation consultants" emerged as the most important architects of executive compensation plans.
The compensation consultants promised to design pay programs that did things like "drive the right behaviors" by corporate management, which meant assuming more risk to maximize shareholder value. Public companies hired droves of consultants to analyze pay schemes and design pay packages that created incentives to maximize share prices. Consultants came to be viewed as essential to boards of directors that wanted to implement appropriate—and tax qualified—performance measures.
The most successful consultants are those who can justify the biggest salary increases for the top executives of the companies that hired them. Researchers at the University of Southern California recently found that the median CEO compensation is $1.5 million in companies not using executive compensation consultants, $3 million in companies that purchase general survey data from such consultants but do not directly retain them, and $4.2 million in companies that retain consultants.
Some companies use multiple consultants. The USC study found that the more consultants a company hires, the more it pays its top executives. About one-quarter of Fortune 250 companies hire multiple compensation consultants.
Activist investor Carl Icahn summed the situation up well when he recently observed on his Web site that "the use of these compensation consultants, gives both boards and CEOs the appearance of legitimacy for their decisions to award massive pay packages to lackluster CEOs, making it appear that these decisions are objective and scientific, which they absolutely are not."
The government also has tried to regulate executive compensation by requiring greater disclosure of the details of compensation plans. Perversely, this too has contributed to an increase in executive pay.
How so? No self-respecting board of directors is willing to admit that their company's CEO is below average. So anytime the new disclosures indicate that an executive's pay is below average in any way, a pay increase is ordered.
Since the early 1990s, government regulation of executive compensation has encouraged greater share-price volatility and risk-taking by U.S. corporate executives and led directly to higher, rather than lower, levels of executive compensation. Nevertheless, the Obama administration is now seeking an even greater role in overseeing and regulating executive pay.
In June, Gene Sperling, a top aid to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, told the House Committee on Financial Services that "our goal is to help ensure that there is a much closer alignment between compensation, sound risk management and long-term value creation for firms and the economy as a whole."
This is just what the regulators told us back in 1992. Current proposals will no doubt result in even higher percentages of executive compensation coming from stock and option schemes rather than from salaries. History teaches that the most profound consequences of new compensation regulation will be unintended. It also teaches that as bad as private ordering may have worked in getting executive compensation right, the results of central planning have been even worse.
Mr. Macey is a law professor at Yale and a member of the Task Force on Property Rights at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703573604574491352851002752.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

 

[doobnVA]

One thing it seems you haven't taken into account, is the market trading at much lower prices today (especially in the case of those companies who received "bail out" money). That means executive pay in the form of company stock that's worth next to nothing compared to what it would have been in the 90's right up until these companies were bankrupted and we bailed them out. Here's the most recent decade of GM stock: http://www.investorguide.com/stock-charts.cgi?osymb=GM&siteid=8BD6B6FD-860E-46B8-9949-D17C8BCB359F&sid=3841935&symb=GM&time=10yr&go=Draw+Chart&uf=0&compidx=aaaaa~0&ma=0&maval=

 

[macinnis]

I don't understand how this is a discussion. These fuckers are giving themselves bonuses with our tax dollars, after nearly ruining the world economy with derivative trading, naked short selling, etc. Personally I think they should be paying back the taxpayer with their own personal, substantial wealth.

 

[PadawanBater]

I don't understand how this is a discussion. These fuckers are giving themselves bonuses with our tax dollars, after nearly ruining the world economy with derivative trading, naked short selling, etc. Personally I think they should be paying back the taxpayer with their own personal, substantial wealth.

This persons post FTW!!! +rep

 

[londonfog]

It seems that anything that Obama has something to do with people say its bad....So sad

 

[Johnnyorganic]

It seems that anything that Obama has something to do with people say its bad....So sad

That's a ridiculously ironic statement coming from you.

You spew nothing but vitriol for the previous administration, yet you can't seem to find one item worthy of criticism in the present administration.

Partisan lapdogs are sad.

 

[londonfog]

That's a ridiculously ironic statement coming from you.

You spew nothing but vitriol for the previous administration, yet you can't seem to find one item worthy of criticism in the present administration.

Partisan lapdogs are sad.

Seems like you really don't know me... Now only a hit dog hollers ( did we not go down this road before??? ) Maybe I should have said some people..... Do you deny that some people just go against somethings just because its coming from the Obama Admin.. Hell some people even blamed him for the Olympics and was happy that we lost it to Rio... Come on you stand better then that JohnnyO...Be honest some hate just to hate..but I stand corrected because I should have said "some"...

Now far as my hate for the Bush Admin..Dude the guy was my Commander-in-Chief.. Until I retired I did what I was told, because he was so ( while keeping my thoughts to myself for the most part)... It took me about 3 years to see that his admin was not helping this country..I did not start spewing and venting in the freakin first year of his term,nor the second year of his term, but by the third year OMG i was done and when I saw him win another election ( or steal ). I decided to take my retirement when it was time...Now that being said it took and I gave time to Bush because of the position that he holds and it was more then just the phuckin 10 months that SOME are doing..Now far as me saying something neg about what Obama is doing it again goes back to giving a person a chance..