Salary Fixing!
According to the BBC, the Treasury department is going to “negotiate” with 7 financial companies to cut the compensation of their top 25 employees by an average of 50%, with some salaries dropping by 90% in favor of stocks as payment, in an effort to ensure that executives act with the best interests of the company at heart.
Here’s the thing, if the executives don’t act with the best interest of the company at heart, they open themselves up to a class action lawsuit from the shareholders for failing in their fiduciary duty. So why does the government need to involve itself, and where does the federal government get off telling a company how much they can pay their workers??
It’s based on the notion that these 7 companies took federal money as part of the TARP program, so therefore, the government can control the company. The problem is that these stipulations weren’t in the TARP program. The government made an agreement, and has gone back at least twice now, to change it after the fact, because they either don’t like the result, or want to do more.
I find the specter of governmental control of wages repugnant. You may call me paranoid, but if this doesn’t bother you, I’d say you’re not paranoid enough.
