CEO pay

Greedy Executive Pay Gets a Scolding and Not Much Else

Where have we seen this before? The White House has a lot of talk. Then a pay czar is appointed. After some period, a damning report is issued. Then we have the public scolding, while legislation, policy and amendments are ignored and defeated, often by the very same administration.

Any action on the latest outrage du jour? Nah.

Such is the the Obama administration's pay czar's report. To be fair, the Pay Czar was given no power to actually get the ill gotten gains back. He also was limited to institutions who received TARP funds, not the real bail out going on at the Federal Reserve.

The Special Master for TARP Executive Compensation, Kenneth R. Feinberg, a.k.a. Pay Czar, was chartered to monitor executive compensation of bailed out financial firms. This covered 419 banks who received TARP funds. 17 of those banks handed out ill-advised executive compensation tallying $1.6 billion dollars. $1.6 billion dollars equals 26,666 $60,000 a year salaries. In other words, to feed the executive pig, 26,666 people went without a job.

CountryWide: Rigged Game

Why would Bank of America buy out irresponsible Countrywide?

Well, to avoid paying any taxes by writing off the massive bad loans, that's why.

And the Countrywide CEO? He gets $88M for running a major company into the ground, requiring a buyout, causing millions to lose their homes, setting up greedy, predatory mortgages where no one could pay them off.

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