I promise to get back to the music posts eventually. Until at least some time next week, though, I'll be too busy to do anything with this Web forum but clear my political throat.
Here is an e-mail that I sent into my local NPR current-events call-in show, Hearsay. It was read over the air and everything. This is my second Hearsay appearance in the past 70 days. I may be becoming a crank, but I still have a long way to go down that slippery slope before I can be found typing my manifesto in a one-room cabin.
Anyway, Obama's talk about pay-plan limits for bank executives makes my palms itch. What do you think?
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Kathy,
I have two questions about President Obama's announcement that annual salaries for some financial institutions' executives will be capped at $500,000. I have no answers, but I'd be interested in hearing thoughts other than my own, which come down to, "While I'm as upset with the likes of John Thain as anyone, I also think setting hard limits on executive pay is a bad and probably illegal idea."
Here are my questions:
-- Without fully nationalizing the banks and making bank executives federal employees, how can the government set salaries?
-- If pay is limited to $500,000 per year, what will happen to the rest of the, say, $25,500,000 that had been paid out to bank executives in the last few years? It seems likely that the money will just disappear. How can actively taking money out of circulation during a financial crisis help anyone? I suppose the cap satisfies some desire for vengeance, but isn't that kind of cutting up our credit cards to spite our wallets?
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1 comment:
Hey Son,
You are a long way from being the crank that I am but give it another 20 years.
My mother once accused me of being out beyond Attila the Hun in my social attitudes. That was before Rush preempted the title.
What we are living through is the end of the American Republic and the creation of the Socialist States of North America.
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