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A Pyrrhic Victory in The Compensation Wars.
Well, look at that. Kenneth Feinberg, the "special master on compensation" -- second best executive branch title, behind SIGTARP -- told Bank of America Chief Executive Kenneth Lewis that he shouldn't get paid this year. And that he should give back $1 million to the Bank. Lewis, fearing a fight with Feinberg, said yes...
... because he is set to receive approximately $60 million in retirement benefits at the end of the year. Oy. I suppose it's something of a good sign that B of A at least realized that a public spat with the administration would not endear them to the public, but the fact that Wall Street observers were apparently "shocked" by the move tells me that the financial world has yet to absorb the magnitude of their businesses' effect on the rest of the economy. Goldman Sachs' behavior is certainly shocking.
-- Tim Fernholz
COMMENTS (1)
I'm sorry, but having a government official decide piecemeal whether so and so is worthy of his enormously inflated salary is just ridiculous. Instead, we ought to just tax the living crap out of ALL these ludicrous salaries, which would cure a big portion of the problems with our financial system - much of the incentive to take excessive risk would just go away.
Posted by: Sean Peters | October 17, 2009 9:52 AM