Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Executive Pay: A Decent Day for Free Market Capitalism

President Obama now says that senior executive compensation will be capped at $500,000 for those companies receiving "exceptional assistance" from the government. Be happy about this, but not because we want to punish those big bad Wall Street executives.

This is good. Anyone watching CNBC and/or Fox Business when Congress passed TARP or approved a bailout for AIG, Citi, or any other bankruptcy deserving company/industry. Everyone on the trading floor was cheering and patting each other on the back. The DOW went up. Those jerks were thrilled about receiving welfare. As a business owner, the last thing I want is the government getting involved in any way, shape or form in my business.

Sorry Wall Street, most of us learned a long time ago there's no free lunch. These guys are worse than the people who take a "free vacation", not realizing that they need to sit through a very high pressure time share sales pitch.

Let the government put more regulations on these bailouts. Make them so unattractive that no company has any interest in taking them. The government has no idea how to run these companies. Look at the SEC. People were reporting this Madoff scam for years, and the SEC looked the other way. These are the guys who want to run Wall Street and health care.

On the other hand, don't be fooled. President Obama started his talk by explaining the urgency of this so-called Stimulus Plan, and then cleverly switched over to executive pay. Popularity for the Stimulus Plan is dropping like an anchor, as it should. The President is trying to tie executive pay together with the nonsense of the Stimulus Plan. They have nothing to do with each other.

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