This morning, President Obama and his baby-faced Treasury secretary Tim Geithner are expected to announce a plan to cap the pay of top executives whose companies received large amounts of TARP funds at $500,000, an amount that one analyst says is “draconian.” It’s not clear yet if this will apply to everyone who took TARP money or just those places that were pulled back from the brink, but we’d say it’s a safe bet that the two faces you see above, Citigroup’s Vikram Pandit ($3.1 million in ‘07, despite sucking) and Bank of America’s Ken Lewis ($20 million) are going to get their asses capped. But is it us, or is it kind of over-the-top that the Times says “rising public fury about huge pay packages for executives at financial companies being propped up by federal tax dollars” is responsible for this? Sure, no one is happy about these guys paying themselves big bucks, but it’s not like there have been demonstrations in the streets every day or protests outside 15 Central Park West. Has the Times conducted some kind of large-scale fury poll that we haven’t heard about?
U.S. Plans to Curb Executive Pay for Bailout Recipients [NYT]
Update: This happened. Fallout TK.
