The Day We Will Be Told How Much We Can Earn

August 14th is a date that may become a historically significant date. Not for the obvious reason, it was my birthday but it was the deadline for companies to submit compensation information to the Pay Czar. Since June, when he was appointed, Pay Czar, Wesley Mouch, oops I mean Kenneth Feinberg, has been hard at work interviewing the several companies whose executive pay comes under his authority.

My question is where did Mouch’s, oh I mean Feinberg’s, authority come from? I know he was appointed by the President and I suppose the President can appoint whoever he would like to advise him. But Mouch, ah Fienberg, is making rules not advising. At least cabinet members must have the Senates consent before they take office. In a letter to the Treasury Secretary, Dave Mitchum, oh I mean Timothy Geithner, Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank said "Congress and taxpayers alike are rightly alarmed that companies would enrich their executives while deferring repayment of the federal financial assistance that helped them avoid financial catastrophe". So I guess Mouch, I mean Feinberg, has the authority to do what ever he wants since the Constitution specifically states that if the Speaker of the House and Barney Frank (yes the founding fathers mentioned Barney by name) write a letter citing the avoidance of a financial catastrophe any Presidential appointee shall have the authority to make any rule the appointee deems necessary, as long as the rule has no effect on any member of Congress. What you don’t think that clause is in the constitution? You want me to show it to you? How dare you. You are just another Astroturf mob member, a wing nut birther and someone who I will report to flag@whitehouse.gov if you don’t watch it. Now if we can move on to something more productive.

For now Mouch er Fienberg (I just don’t know why I keep getting these names confused) has the authority to set the compensation for executives of the companies that have not yet paid the government back for the TARP money they were loaned. I guess that I am ok with that because there should be some penalty for taking government money but what may happen next is concerning to me. The TARP companies will not be allowed to pay their people at the market rate while the non-TRAP companies can. Naturally the best and the brightest will leave the TARP companies and head to the non-tarp companies. With inferior leadership the TARP companies will not be able to compete causing them to lose even more money making them even less likely to pay back the government and possibly require even more government loans. This will infuriate Congress who will demand the CEOs appear before them to explain why things are going so poorly. The CEOs will blame it on the brain drain caused by their uncompetitive compensation structure. Congress will then turn to Mouch Fienberg whatever his name is and demand he level the playing field and that is when the Pay Czar will tell all of us how much we can be paid.

What Would Walt Do?

Last night I watched the movie “Grand Torino”. I saw it back in February and it was one of those movies that had such a strong effect on me that I had to get it as soon as the video came out. At the time I wrote a short post about it and after watching the movie again I decided to re-post the article here.

Those of you who’ve see the movie “Grand Torino” will recognize the name Walt Kowalski as the character played by Clint Eastwood. For those of you who have not seen the movie (the language in the movie is tough but the story and the message is incredible) I do not want to give it away but Walt is a retired Ford assembly line worker and a Korean War veteran who still lives in the Detroit area house where he raised his two kids. Needless to say his neighborhood has gone through a few changes and has become a crime ridden hopeless place. Walt is a hold out from a past generation, a generation that was by and large self sufficient. He has no need or use for help from anyone. In one scene after Walt breaks up a gang fight with a shot gun, he is asked “why didn’t you just call the police?” Walt’s reply was something like “in Korea when the enemy attacked our position we could not just call the police”. There are few other great messages in the story other than the self reliance one but a message of self reliance really stands out these days.

This was brought home to me when right after seeing the movie Diana and I saw a man standing at the entrance to a grocery store holding a sign saying “I have lost everything but faith”. As we drove by, I asked Diana what would Walt have done if he lost everything? Diana said that she thought that Walt would have worked to get it all back and certainly not wait for someone else to help him. My thought was that by just sitting there, holding a sign and waiting for someone else to do something to help shows that the man had lost faith, faith in himself. It troubles me that with all the bailouts and stimulus packages our government is encouraging all of us to exchange our faith in ourselves for an unwarranted faith in the government. The powers that be want to change Americans from self reliance to government dependence.

Don’t take what I am saying to mean that we should not be concerned with our neighbors or be greedy and selfish; Americans have never been that way. Helping our friends and neighbors has always been our, we the peoples, job not that of the government. When I was a kid I remember when “I‘m here from the government and I’m here to help” was the punch line to a joke not a way of life. Remember the Pilgrims did not come to America to have a government take care of them.