Despite Pay Czar's Cuts, Many Top Executives Have Already Left Bailed-Out Firms

washingtonpost.com:

The administration had tasked Kenneth Feinberg, the Treasury Department's special master on compensation, to evaluate the pay packages of 25 of the most highly compensated executives at each of seven firms receiving exceptionally large amounts of taxpayer assistance.

But Thursday, he ruled only on slightly more than three quarters of the pay packages that were to be under his purview. The balance reflected executives who have left since he began his work in June or will be gone by the end of the year.

Read the whole story: washingtonpost.com

Comments

[RJII]

Good riddance to bad rubbish.
I wish big company boards, shareholders, and most importantly the employees would stop rewarding failure, narrow the gap on executive salaries verses employee salaries, and clean house starting at the top.
I hope the Mom and Pops make a big comeback in every industry.

[diffrntdrummr]

I don't understand. The lame stream media is saying that if we don't continue to pay these exorbitant bonuses and salaries to these geniuses who started this mess, then they will just have to go somewhere else!! But if they are already gone,we must all be doomed.Oh Noes! What will we do? We have to beg them to come back and finish the job.I have to go watch Fox News and find out what is going on. Certainly they will tell me the truth.

[desertman]

The pay cuts merely mean the bank will go into bankruptcy sooner due to the talent drain.

[ImmanuelGoldstein]

Wow, like I keep saying ,wingnuts have stopped TRYING to make sense. This one has missed the whole point of the discussion!

[Haditup2here]

Well, were they not going in that direction before the bailouts? If so, where was the talent?

[RJII]

Fox News will also tell you that if we don't pay these failures gobs of millions, they will leave us and we won't be able to find anybody else qualified to F-up big.

[musselmanm]

SO! The girls and boys that brought our country to the precipice will be looking for work? If they have found it I say boycott the firms which hire them. It is a good bet the firms will be trying to steal from America with these thieves.

[desertman]

HP readers are probably not customers of these firms.

[middleoftheroad]

GE TOOK TARP MONEY.... Lets take MSNBC hosts salaries....why should Matthews make $5MILLION a year with those ratings??? Olberbmann gets what $7MILLION.­­..Zucker?­?­?? We need to take their paycheck!!!! NOW!...How much does Jeffrey Immelt make a year with the share price like that??? Take back our tax money!

[desertman]

They don't work in that part of the corporation.

[TheLastWallStreeter]

The vast majority of the Wall Streeters most of the people here are complaining about don't work on securitizied mortgages and CDS either. In fact, most of those guys were out of fixed income groups and have long since lost their jobs.

Blaming the MSNBC hosts for GE's problems makes about as much sense as blaming a equity capital markets banker for Bank of America's.

[Spiritgirl2]

Somehow, I'm not feeling the "Executive Pain". These people failed, period! That's what you call it when the taxpayers have to bail you out! YOU FAILED! Only in America, does the OLIGARCHY not only not feel "contrite" about their mis-management - they have the gall to be upset, whiny, and want to throw temper tantrums! And only in America should they be treated like very spoiled bratty 3 years olds and taken out, tarred and feathered, and made to perp walk around the nation holding their signs of shame:

I'm a liar & thief!

In big bold red letters!!!

[John Garner]

Your saying they left, like thats a bad thing! Arent these the same guys that screwed it all up to begin with or were complicite in it occuring?

[senorlou]

From the article:

- -
That news drew scorn Thursday from employees at AIG Financial Products who said they had repeatedly offered to rework their pay arrangements but that Feinberg was unwilling to work with them.

"He has zero credibility with FP employees at this point," said one employee, who was not authorized to speak on the record. "It's a very demoralized workforce."
- -

You want to talk about spoiled brats? Who cares how demoralized AIG employees are? They are a worthless, deadly corporation that should have been split into tiny pieces and scattered to the wind. Thanks to Paulson and the Bush Admin, AIG got $150 billion. California was only $24 billion or so in the red, and we were left to fend for ourselves. 35 million people live in California. But AIG, with far less than that on its payroll, were given 6 times that amount. And now they're angry.
Honestly, these people shouldn't be paid half as much as a school teacher. They do nothing of value for our society. We should have just gotten all of them on welfare and food stamps. They do not deserve anywhere near what they made from this scam.

[Nelson Jacobsen]

Could we get the names of the companies where they are going so that avoidance and possibly a few short bets on their stocks can be thunk over.

[BlaineNelson]

Should banks be split from wall street?

http://www.youpolls.com/details.asp?pid=6346

,

[senorlou]

Yes, please.

[land2341]

2nd that! The repeal of Glass-Steagall was the game changing mistake...... I always wonder wether Clinton really believed this would be good or was just paid to think that way.

Last December he was still swearing he would make the same decision....... I could have cared les about his girlies, but a few of his policies rankle still.

[lightningbolt]

These executives should not be working there anymore in the first place. They should have ALL been fired before getting bailout money. The companies that got bailout money should have been taken into bankruptcy and nationalized. Why pay incompetent fools to continue being incompetent fools? Their pay should be reduced to 0.

[senorlou]

That would have been perfect.

[Photon55]

The fear of a "brain" drain is foolish. Working in the financial industry is not nuclear science or quantum physics. These financial "wizards" will be collecting unemployment like a great many other Americans, others could be headed to jail.

[drymartini1]

well now is a perfect time for Merrill brokers to leave BAC and join Morgan stanley/chase or goldman.

now you might think that brokers dont add any value to the economy or that company. but when they move, they take the accounts with them....i am sure BAC and Citi would love to lose those accounts. I sure would.

[Haditup2here]

Bank of America was a commercial bank before they merged with Merrill Lynch and if the Glassman-Steagall Act was reinstated it wouldn't matter. Sure some of the accounts would go away -- but so would some of the volatile risk. This doesn't even include the toxic assets that still remains off some of the balance sheets. Besides, I doubt that would have any real effect on the average depositor or small business since most of the firms (BofA included) have reduced their lending and clawed back on their revolving credit anyway. Better yet, that is why BoA is in the condition that it is now. They took over Merrill Lynch, Country-wide, and other entities without properly assessing the risk or what they were actually worth.

[sposton]

We will soon find out this is all for show. Whatever the administration comes up, has already been approved by Wall Street banksters. It is all a part of public relations (propaganda) campaign.

[KLovesFreedom]

I concur, Sposton....Its all smoke and mirrors...­.Distracti­ng the masses as "they" (and I am not referring to the clowns on the Hill) move forward with their global agenda....

[Haditup2here]

Unfortunately, I have to agree although I had my doubts from the beginning. First off, they have stated very little about the bonuses in which some employees receive the bulk of their compensation. Secondly, some of these people have probably walked away with golden parachutes or have gone to Goldman Sachs or Morgan Chase since there are already more stringent (not that high though) regulations in terms of compensation at commercial banks. Thirdly, why the long wait? Why did they wait to put in rules and conditions for compensation after administering the second phase of TARP? That is quite backwards if you ask me. Right now, I am more interested in see how they are going to continue to work around the call for reinstating the Glassman-Stegall Act.

[hellboundtrain]

"America! What a country!" Yakov Smirnoff
Where the exact people that helped drive our economy right into the ditch, get mega $million bonuses!

Medal of Freedom, maybe? Free to skru the country any way that they can think of!

[PhilipTaylor]

G0LDMAN HAS PAID BACK ONLY 15.26% of the MONEY IT RECEIVED FROM AMERICANS

http://www.businessinsider.com/dylan-ratigan-how-goldman-sachs-made-3-billion-a-year-after-we-bailed-their-lucky-asses-out-2009-10

G0LDMAN got the Following:

1. $10 Billion from TARP
2. $11 Billion from FED
3. $30 Billion from FDIC
4. $13 Billion from A1G pass through

Total = $64 Billion

They have paid back only the $10 Billion in TARP money or 15.26%! When and where is the other $54 Billion!

Time to LIMIT their INCOMES just like CIT and BofA!

[sonofsamphm1c]

The 13 billion "pass through from AIG" is not a debt of Saddman Sachs to the US government. The United States loaned AIG 13 billion. AIG owes the United States the 13 billion. Saddam Sachs got back its own money. Not our money; its own money.

This is about as obvious a transaction as it gets, and the left repeatedly gets it dead wrong.

[oldguru]

Fine, By that logic, if I go to Las Vegas and use your money to gamble, and I lose it all, It is then up to the casino to pay you back?

[Mike169]

I guess there'll be jobs all over the banking industry for enterprising young future bankers.

[sonofsamphm1c]

Many CEOs will be reluctant to do business with a bank that has pay restrictions - just on principle. So eventually the bailed-out banks may see some of their best accounts follow the departed executives into new buildings. That will make our investment worth less.

[Hallucinocynic]

Actually, the OP is correct. There will be no banking vaccum. There never has been. There never will be. Money does not evaporate but travels - as you point out - in different directions.

If banking executives are that callow that they wouldn't do business with an organization "just on principle," then they will be left at the curb. The notion that this tier of executives is irreplaceable is not only specious but laughable. The sad fact is, the legerdemain being employed by this current cabal is transparent to those who are not invested in perpetuating a system fraught with tacitly approved illegalities; and there are a large number of younger banking entrepreneurs who are more than prepared to step in and replace the Brahmins who have ravaged - and continue to ravage - the economic landscape.