Lee Michaels wrote:

You have to admit that some of these excutive pay packages are in another
universe, having nothing to do with us mere mortals. I am certain that
they can find competent people who will work for more reasonable pay. Ithe
big issue for most folks is paying for this out of our pockets. If the did
their jobs well, we wouldn't have to. So all the big money goes to pay for
incompetence.


That sounds really good, but sets a very dangerous precedent. Remember
that the bailout money was also paying the salaries for the other workers
at AIG as well. So, the agreement is that $1M bonuses (that, by the way,
were contracted for before the bailout, so there is an issue of breach of
contract) are excessive. Would $500k been OK? No? How about $250k?
$50k? $10k? $5k? How about the salaries of the employees being paid?
How much is too much, $500k? That seems to be the limit being set by the
president right now. $500k is an awful lot of money, more than most of us
make, since this is a failing company, shouldn't that number be more like
$250k or $100k? Really, since this was a failing company, maybe nobody
should be making more than the US average salary. Now you're getting down
into the government dictating what an average person at a company that
happened to be mis-managed is making. Now, if it's OK to set salaries for
companies being bailed out, should the government be setting salaries for
companies that have government contracts? Pretty soon, the rationale for
why the government can set *your* salary will articulated.

This is nothing more than populism run amok. The thing is, congress set
no limitation in the law limiting how the companies used these bailout
funds. The amount in question here is less than 1/10 of 1% of the total
amount that AIG received. IMO, there should have been no bailout to begin
with -- if a company is going to fail, let it fail or reconstitute itself
through bankruptcy proceedings.





Reminds me of a comment about the CEO of Boing Aircraft Company. It went
something like this, "He gets over 14 million a year and he still has not
built and delivered the much touted dreamliner aircraft. Think how much
he will get paid when he actually delivers the dreamliner."

--
If you're going to be dumb, you better be tough