Limiting his authority to the Wall Street TARP recipients is understandable. Limiting that authority to only seven simply doesn't make sense. Noticeably missing is Goldman Sachs who greatly benefited and continue to benefit fro the TARP money given to AIG. Why the free ride for some? If Goldman wants to flaunt their obnoxious numbers, shouldn't they also be ready to deal with the fallout? Leaving them off the list when they are alive due to billions of taxpayer dollars still does not make any sense.
Feinberg also testified that his authority to set pay should not extend beyond the seven firms. Taxpayers have a vested interest in these companies since the government owns significant stakes in each. Aside from AIG and Bank of America, the other firms are Citigroup, General Motors, Chrysler, GMAC Financial Services and Chrysler Financial.Hoped? Really? What part of this botched bailout process did he miss? It's precisely this kind of ignorance and foolish hope that got us to this point in the first place. Wall Street does not respond to "hope" or asking nicely. They only respond to force and a lot of it. This pay czar is more disappointing by the day.
"The federal government should not enter the business of micromanaging compensation practices beyond these seven companies," he said. But Feinberg added that he hoped other companies would model their executive compensation on the practices he was putting in place at the seven firms.
