Obama: Excessive Pay Offends our Values

(AP)
"It does offend our values when executives of big financial firms that are struggling pay themselves huge bonuses even as they rely on extraordinary assistance to stay afloat," the president said.
Mr. Obama lauded Treasury's decision to limit compensation for executives from firms that have not yet repaid the government. He said Kenneth Feinberg, the special master at Treasury tasked with handling executive pay, "was faced with the difficult task of striking the proper balance between standing up for taxpayers and returning a measure of stability to our financial system."
"Under these competing interests, I believe he's taken an important step forward today in curbing the influence of executive compensation on Wall Street while still allowing these companies to succeed and prosper," said Mr. Obama. "But more work needs to be done."
The president made the comments at the start of a signing ceremony for a veterans health care funding reform bill at the White House.
At a briefing before the president made his comments, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters that the White House did not have any involvement in Feinberg's decision. Mr. Obama stressed Thursday that Feinberg had made "an independent judgment."
"You know, I've always believed that our system of free enterprise works best when it rewards hard work," said the president. "This is America. We don't disparage wealth, we don't begrudge anybody for doing well, we believe in success."
Yet the pay packages for executives at bailed-out firms violated Americans' standards of right and wrong, he suggested.
The president also urged the Senate to pass legislation giving shareholders a say in executive pay packages and called on Congress to "move forward on financial reform legislation "that will help prevent the crisis we saw last fall from happening again."
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Obamas socialist ideals offend our values.
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So by your logic (if you call it that), shareholders (taxpayers) are socialistic when they want to control all aspects of the companies they own?
The next time my boss tells me something I am going to call him a socialist. I wonder how that'll go over.
Obamas socialist ideals offend our values.
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But corporate communism is okay with you right?
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Hey Mr. President. Excessive pay would'nt offend my values at all. It would increase them.
Sean Penn?
Ben Afleck?
Barbara Streisand?
George Steponapolis?
George Soros?
Alex Baldwin?
Michael Moore?
Top marginal rate at 93% -- and there is no need to control anyones pay.
Possibly, because Hedge Fund ****** and Private Equity Pirates did not exist (and steal billions) during the 1950's, the marginal tax rate on income above several million needs to be revised today to something closer to 95% at 20M -- and up to 99% at 1B -- but this is only an necessary adjustment to Eisenhower's rate.
All typical attempts (by the ruling-elite) to 'game' the system, to loot via the well-known market flaw of 'negative externality cost dumping' (whether with traditional pollution, or with the new ethereal pollution of 'debt bombs') can also be fully addressed with a simple tax code which actually charges offenders with the externality costs that they are trying to dump on society.
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
You conservatives really crack me up. Paying a CEO $ 20,000,000 per year is a stupid business decison! If GM would hve fired their top executive at 20 million per year, they could use that money to pay the salaries of 200 engineers and scientists. You know the peope who invent things and take over the automotive markets in three to five years. Instead GM made a stupid business and retained the executives.
Obama should come up with a progressive income tax and hit these overpaid people with 90% tax on all income over $ 500,000 per year.
That would balance the feeral budget rather quickly.