Whether I have jurisdiction to decide his compensation or not, we will take a look and decide over the next few weeks.
Obama pay czar Kenneth Feinberg • On what he’s considering doing to companies that have been slow to pay back money from the TARP program. Those companies include some of the government’s favorite targets: Citi, AIG, Bank of America, Chrysler Financial, Chrysler, General Motors and GMAC. Basically, two of the country’s biggest banks and the two auto companies that we bailed out. • source
Two reasons why: Investors appear to be buying stocks at the moment, and they want the monkey off their backs. TARP regulations force companies to limit executive pay, which they don’t like. source
U.S. Bancorp, Capital One Financial Corp., KeyCorp, Principal Financial Group Inc. and BB&T Corp. all announced plans this morning to raise $7 billion in capital to get the U.S. off their backs. source
The sheer size of the program … is so large and the leverage being provided to the private equity participants so beneficial, that the taxpayer risk is many times that of the private parties, thereby potentially skewing the economic incentives.
Inspector General Neil Barofksy • In a massive quarterly report on the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Sound like fun? It totally is. We hope, if the banks defraud us taxpayers, they do it in really cool ways, like buying themselves gold houses and rocket cars. • source