{"id":657,"date":"2009-02-04T15:03:04","date_gmt":"2009-02-04T13:03:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ofcourseimright.com\/?p=657"},"modified":"2009-02-09T13:52:42","modified_gmt":"2009-02-09T11:52:42","slug":"should-we-limit-bankers-salaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/?p=657","title":{"rendered":"Should we limit bankers&#8217; salaries?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-51\" style=\"border: 0pt none; margin: 4px;\" title=\"Bureau of Economics\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ofcourseimright.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/07\/be.jpg\" alt=\"Bureau of Economics\" width=\"111\" height=\"139\" \/>Today the Voice of America <a href=\"http:\/\/www.voanews.com\/english\/2009-02-04-voa4.cfm\">reported<\/a> (amongst others) that President Obama will seek to cap executive pay at $500,000 for any company that accepts bailout money.\u00a0 This after a storm of criticism has washed over Citigroup and Bank of America about bonuses, corporate planes, and my favorite, trips to Las Vegas.<\/p>\n<p>While it certainly seems to me that anyone who requires a bailout should at least have some humility, few CEOs in my own experience do.\u00a0 What they have is a competitive urge and drive to succeed.\u00a0 While in theory humility and drive do not conflict, in practice I am hard pressed to name a CEO who has both, with one exception that proves the rule, Warren Buffett.<\/p>\n<p>Were we to impose humility on CEOs I would be concerned that we would end up with second string players in a Superbowl situation.\u00a0 On the other hand, bonuses in the face of a bailout are insulting to those taxpayers who effectively have paid them.\u00a0 And so some balance should be struck.\u00a0 My own thinking is that these guys should be capped so long as (a) they&#8217;re taking money, and (b) their company is not profitable.\u00a0 Shareholders shouldn&#8217;t get bonuses either, however.\u00a0 And so while a company is taking money it should not issue a dividend, and the money it takes shouldn&#8217;t come for free.\u00a0 I wonder whether the U.S. should require options of a certain amount or actual stock.\u00a0 This way we share in the company&#8217;s successes as well as failures.<\/p>\n<p>What are your thoughts?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today the Voice of America reported (amongst others) that President Obama will seek to cap executive pay at $500,000 for any company that accepts bailout money.\u00a0 This after a storm of criticism has washed over Citigroup and Bank of America about bonuses, corporate planes, and my favorite, trips to Las Vegas. While it certainly seems &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/?p=657\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Should we limit bankers&#8217; salaries?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,17,4],"tags":[244],"class_list":["post-657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-complexity","category-economics","category-politics","tag-bailout"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=657"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":659,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657\/revisions\/659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}