Class Warfare

by digby

Mort Zuckerman just said on MSNBC that they should put an overall cap on all financial firm salaries instead of the top executives because these firms will lose all the important talent who will go with other companies which aren’t regulated (and presumably ruin them too.) What he conveniently neglects to note is that if the “overall cap” is put in place in order to keep these valuable and obscenely overpaid executives on board, the middle and lower paid workers will have to be the ones to take a pay cut. Isn’t that a great idea?

I really don’t think these failed executives are going to find a lot of takers for their dubious talents. The entire economy is severely contracting and I doubt there’s any company out there that is anxious to deal with angry shareholders about hiring some former wall street or banking titan who requires that he be paid millions of dollars each year. But let them have at it. The taxpayers don’t need to be on the hook for their dubious services.

And I would actually bet that there are plenty of talented executives out there who would be happy to take on the job for a half a million dollars a year and shares of the new, revived institution. (Especially if the government guarantees shareholders, in which case we’re all being had.) Some of them might even do it out of patriotic duty — or at least in the knowledge that saving the financial system is imperative if they ever want to make big money in the future. They can’t all be short-sighted, Randian morons.

Can they?

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