Bloomberg news has an article on Wall Street pay revealing that the CEOs of many large banks have taken big pay cuts in the past year or two (CEO pay at the 50 largest financial firms has fallen 37% in the past two years). Buried in the story was a revealing comment from Obama Administration “Special Master for Compensation” (Pay Czar) Kenneth Feinberg who declared that pay cuts for the CEOs of big banks “demonstrates better than anything the political impact of what I’m doing.” Feinberg goes on to suggest …
Not only do government wage controls not work, they usually backfire. Perhaps worse, like a lot of ill-conceived government schemes, they often punish the wrong people. The Federal Reserve yesterday announced a bank pay limits affecting every bank employee in America in (over)reaction to controversy to big bonuses at a few big banks and insurance companies. On the backfire “front,” the government has tried three times in recent decades to limit executive pay:
