Obama's Pay Czar Targets Salary Cuts

[Chris_]

Obama's Pay Czar Targets Salary Cuts

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration's pay czar is planning to clamp down on compensation at firms receiving large sums of government aid by cutting annual cash salaries for many of the top employees under his authority, according to people familiar with the matter.

Instead of awarding large cash salaries, Kenneth Feinberg is planning to shift a chunk of an employee's annual salary into stock that cannot be accessed for several years, these people said. Such a move, the most intrusive yet into corporate compensation, would mark the government's first effort to curb the take-home pay of everyone from auto executives to financial traders.

Feinberg is expected to issue by mid-October his determination on compensation packages for 175 of the most-highly compensated executives and employees at the seven firms he oversees. The companies are: American International Group Inc., Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., General Motors Co., GMAC Financial Services Inc., Chrysler LLC and Chrysler Financial.

Yup.  Government controlled businesses.  Welcome to the United States of Socialist America.   

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[thundley4]

This is so  up.  It's coming to light that some of the banks were forced to take bailout money, and it started under President Bush with the TARP Funds. Paulson nearly blackmailed some of them into taking money from the Fed. Even worse than controlling the salaries of the companies that took money, this administration is looking at capping salaries of all companies.

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

Unfortunately high salaries make the recipient unsympathetic but what we need is someone to step up and tell Obama to go **** himself.

[DumbAss Tanker]

Unfortunately high salaries make the recipient unsympathetic but what we need is someone to step up and tell Obama to go **** himself.

Indeed MSB, the fact that they received large handouts and then reaped huge rewards makes it extremely difficult to empathize with the bastiges, but on the other hand, one cannot expect a business organization to recover a profitable position in its sector if the talent is going to be paid far below the standard used by their competitors to attract the best and brightest...much like tying weights to a swimmer and expecting him to go faster. 

[Rebel]

Yup.  Government controlled businesses.  Welcome to the United States of Fascist America.   

Fixed. There are many, many Socialist elements to Post Turtle's plans, but this is textbook Fascism.

[Hawkgirl]

The bronze statue is not thinking this through.  If you reduce salaries, you'll also reduce the amount of money you can TAKE from those salaries [through taxes].  The law of unintended consequences applies here.

[Thor]

In my not so humble opinion, they really need to take a look at the civilians that are employed by the Government. They could start with the Congress, White House Staff, etc and go from there.

[bkg]

The bronze statue is not thinking this through.  If you reduce salaries, you'll also reduce the amount of money you can TAKE from those salaries [through taxes].  The law of unintended consequences applies here.

I do find that entertaining. When he bitched about the $12B in bonuses on Wall St., he conveniently left out the fact that 6-6.5B was going right into the gov't coffers.