I admit… when I saw the headlines earlier this week about another $800 billion for the bailout, I started to get angry. I understood, from talking to friends I trust in the finance world and reading as much as I could get my hands on, that the first bailout was necessary. But the more I read about corporate retreats and corporate jets, the more angry I get about spending $1.8 trillion dollars on the bailout. Somewhere, somehow, the folks running these companies just flat out don’t get it.
So here’s my proposal — continue the bailout because we cannot allow these markets to collapse, (and put some intelligent regulation and oversight in, please!) But any company that takes federal bailout money must put a cap on salaries. No one at any company that takes federal monies can make more than the President of the United States.
I think it’s fair. That’s a $400,000 salary. That’s fair. That’s livable. (Heck, I’d love to learn how to just get by on $400,000.) And more importantly, it sends a clear message — the era of greed is over.
I know there are some who say that the market can bear a higher price, and that’s what is necessary to get the brilliant minds we need to run these companies, but I’m unimpressed with the folks running them so far, and, honestly, President Obama is, by all accounts, a very smart man.
I know there are those who will feel that this doesn’t go far enough — that the CEOs of AIG and BearStearns should be forced to give back salary back. I think that’s a fight we won’t win.
This makes sense to me — if you take bailout money, you pay anyone in your company more money than the highest paid federal employee — the President of the United States — and that includes stock options and such — for the next ten years.
To me, this sends a message to the American people that the executives at these companies are willing to sacrifice like so many Americans are right now. And that’s important, since we are bailing them out with enough money to insure every American, fully fund every school or invest in Social Security so that it’s there when my generation retires. These are all things we were told that the American government couldn’t afford, but now the money is there. It’s only right that everyone takes their share of the hit on this one — and that should certainly include the business folks who oversaw this disaster in the first place.
And if the executives don’t want to do that, well, no one is making them take the federal dollars, are they?
Tags: bailout
