They get these jobs because they play golf in the proper circles. They only care about their own pay, let the company be cursed.

Reality is not Atlas Shrugged, it is The DILBERT Solution.

A pay cap on these chumps would help our economy by preventing waste in industry. While we are at it, how about a cap on university president salaries, and a cap on athletic coach pay?

why no comments? (snicker)

First, only a socialist government interfers with private sector pay! That being said. I want to know when Mr. Obama is giving back all those royalty checks from the sale of his novels? After all, he is now receiving a government subsidy, his paycheck from "we the taxpayers". So, in accordance with his own doctrine, shouldn't he be giving all those proceeds to charity, or capping his pay? And if, as he and our Congress suggest, corporate executives pay is to be determined by job performance, so should our "government employees", House, Executive and Legislative branches be based on performance. I dare say, based on their performance, most of them would be living below the poverty level.

Why doesn't the new 'pay czar' assure that government employees' pay reflects performance instead? How about Congress only getting the percentage of their salary that reflects their approval rating? Or how about teachers being compensated based on the percentage of their students that can pass a minimum compentency level?

Nice way to make the talent run for the hills, eh?

It won't be long before these positions have race and gender quotas.

Arguments about the pay of executives of companies that received bail-out money miss the point. The very well paid people running these companies have failed. High pay did not buy competence and often did not even buy honesty. The top tier of managers should all be fired. Failure should not be rewarded in a free enterprise capitalist system. If we can’t let the companies go under due to a serious impact on our economy that is one thing, we can surely let the failed executives and boards find other employment.

Boards and Officers of our major publicly traded corporations are entrusted with stewarding enterprises built up by generations of employees and investors. These assets are relied upon for employment and as a store of value for investment by over half the population. The Boards and Officers of these corporations have effectively nothing at risk. Their cavalier performance with other people’s money cries out for change. The widely publicized examples of excesses and incompetence of the Officers and Boards of major corporations has led to loss of faith in our free enterprise capitalist system -- teeing the ball up for socialists such as Obama to make changes that go beyond reigning in the abuses of our system of corporate governance.

Our present system of corporate governance has been corrupted, leading to excesses by boards and officers that amount to looting, because they can. Outrageous CEO pay has been a recurring story for years, popping up and then going away. With the bank bail-outs, the failure of GM and Chrysler, the stock market drop and revelations of incompetence and greed in the financial sector all coming together, something to change our corporate governance system is now going to happen. The argument that we need the system as it stands now to get the “best people” to run our major corporations is defeated by the numerous examples of high paid boards and corporate officers being less than competent, or obviously dishonest. Examples of incompetence would include GM, loosing market share for a generation, all the while awarding high pay and bonuses to its officers. Examples of dishonesty of executives and at best incompetence of the Board would include ENRON. The examples go on and on. Our short sighted and corrupted by cash legislators have failed us. Now we are going to pay the price. Hope they don’t kill our golden goose.

Here is a quotation on a previous intentionaly? incompetent effort to cap CEO pay.
""In 1993, Congress attempted to cap the deductibility of executive pay to a maximum of $1 million. But the law applied only to the five highest-paid executives in public firms and only capped non-performance based salaries. In response to this massive loophole, many corporations passed resolutions making all compensation performance-based and shifted much of their top executive pay from base salary to stock options and bonuses linked to performance. ""

What I want to know is why this "pay czar" is only targeting private businesses. Why don't government employees have to adhere to the same standards? Their pay is tied to THEIR performance as well. If the government is going to force those companies who make the money for government to adhere to outrageous rules, shouldn't those senators/congressmen, president and secretaries have the same standards apply?

Geithner also wants Congress to adopt "say on pay" legislation that would give shareholders the ability to hold non-binding votes on compensation levels.

The owners of the company, the shareholders, should have a "say on pay".

This is on of the reasons executive pay is out of control. (Remember the head of the head of the NYSE was getting a 200 million dollar package.)

I can wait until the courts do a legal "slapdown" of much of what has been done during the "100-days of Change".

All federal emplyees, especially Congress and the President/Vice President. Obama wants fairness at all levels...start at home, slick.

What? No provision for presidential pay reflecting presidential performance? He'd owe us money at this point.

Why is it that 20 or 30 years ago executives could run large corporations without earning, say 500 times the average salary of their employees?

Why is it that 30 years ago, executives had so called "talent" without requiring annual compensation in the 10s or 100s of millions of dollars?

Why is it that 20 or 30 years ago, an executive was held accountable for his/her performance as well as the overall performance of his/her corporation? Why is this no longer the case?

Something definitely has to be done about out of control executive compensation. Maybe it's the shareholders that have to decide? Maybe it should be the SEC that should set guidelines on publicly traded companies - i.e. tie compensation to performance. Maybe it's simply excessive taxation for excessive compensation.

No one, regardless of talent, is worth 100's of millions a year in compensation unless he/she is the sole owner of a company. And talent is something we haven't seen to much of on Wall Street these days?

How about some executive and legislative branch "Pay for performance".

Deduct a pro-rated share of the annual deficit from their salaries.

If the government regulates the pay of executives and keeps it low, say below $250,000, then who are they going to raise taxes on?

Just wondering?

(and after that subject line I'm sure I'm on some government watch list - oh well, I don't care)

Obama has decided not to put a cap on executive pay - but he'll easily get around it by taxing compensation, over some level (e.g. $500K), paid to executives of public companies at a huge rate, e.g. every dollar above $500K might get taxed at 90% or something like that.

Obama will structure the cap language so that it will only apply to corporate executives, and not to his Hollywood moonbat buddies, nor his lawyer pals or lobbyist friends.

We need a new president - let's elect one next time!!

If the shareholders of companies are supposed to be able to set management pay levels, then the taxpayers(shareholders) should demand to set our managements(government bureaucrats) pay at $1 per year until this mess is cleaned up and our national debt is payed off. If it's good for business it should be good for government also.

There should be a citizen review board that can adjust (or eliminate) salaries for elected officials who have poor performance. Or better yet, just pay all congressmen and senators the minimum wage for the time they actually spend in their office or in chambers.