US appoints executive paymaster

[eppur_se_muova]

Source: BBC

The US has appointed a "pay czar" to review executive compensation packages for firms that have received government bail-outs.

Kenneth Feinberg, a Washington lawyer, will have the power to set the pay and bonuses of executives at some of the biggest US companies.

These firms include Bank of America, Citigroup and General Motors.

The appointment is part of a wider set of recommendations on pay that could affect all publicly traded companies.



Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8092530.stm

[aquart]

1. Just remember: no one can manage on only $500,000 a year.

Still reeling from that one.

[Yupster]

9. Check out these salaries from the 2008 Red Sox

Mike Lowell $ 12,500,000
Rocco Baldelli $ 2,250,000
Mark Kotsay $ 7,000,000
Julio Lugo $ 9,250,000

These aren't even their good players.

If we're going to put limits on salaries, how about starting with the entertainment industry where the entertainers use city services for their performances routinely.

My own opinion is that the head of a major corporation should make more than a below average shortstop.

[aquart]

10. My god, I can't believe you did that.

Another Democrat who doesn't believe that the person who does the actual LABOR should earn the real money. Heaven forfend the athlete who trains, and take the injuries, and can lose the career in a heartbeat if he falls the wrong way, should take home enough to make his family rich. Even though the audience comes to see HIS work. Even though the producers are making ten and twenty and god knows how many times more than that from the advertising and television sales.

No, I do NOT believe the head of a major corporation should make 1000 times more than an average shortstop. Or the average worker. I do not worship corporate culture elitism. I see NOTHING in corporate development in this century and the last that warrants channeling profits to the executive. I do note that corporate salaries and bonuses seem to be drawn from the excess profits brought about by firing Americans and hiring cheap labor in unorganized, unregulated nations. To you that might be genius. To me, greed and treason. Our nation has been weakened by it. But you want to reward it.

[Blandocyte]

2. Pay Czar

Payzar is as good an extraterrestrial name as Uma Thurman. I for one welcome our alien overlords.

[pinniped]

3. The fix is in somewhere. It always is.

This looks like a phony facade.

[Angleae]

4. And Kenneth Feinberg has the legal authority to do this from what law?

To my knowledge the bailouts had no strings attached.

[quakerboy]

5. As far as I can tell

if you happen to control a majority share of the stock of a company, you do not need a law to enforce your will upon that company.

[Psephos]

6. You're mistaken

That depends on the corporate bylaws regarding voting privileges of various classes of stock.

For example, the Sulzberger family owns a minority of NY Times stock, but it is privileged stock with voting rights. The majority of the stock, the kind sold to the public, does not have voting rights.

[Vidar]

7. Nice gesture, but probably an empty one.

[Progressive_In_NC]

8. If this is real, all companies will begin relocating to India shortly

Executives will not lie down for their half million dollar plus compensation packages being cut. You guys all know this as well as I do.

[sakabatou]

11. Pay master?

Have they been watching "I love money?"

[bemildred]

12. It's not that hard to limit executive pay, just tax it at high rates. nt

[No Elephants]

13. Wth? They did not put any limits into the TARP bill, but they appointed a pay czar? To do what?