>>> The Obama administration will call for increased oversight
>>> of executive pay at all banks, Wall Street firms and possibly
>>> other companies as part of a sweeping plan to overhaul
>>> financial regulation, government officials said...
>
> Haven't we already found that this is a dumb idea? When they limited the
> deductability of pay to $1M, the use of options and "other compensation"
> exploded to make it _even murkier_ to find out what these people get paid.
>
> Pay them in cash, let it show up on their W-2 like everyone else, and tax
> it hard. What's the big deal? How stupid can these people be?
>
> /jordan
===============
To paraphrase one J. Stiglitz; "murkiness creates rents."
I know it's a norm on the list to use ignorance/incompetence as an explanans rather than malfeasance, but after looking at Black's book and one titled "Law and Capitalism: What Corporate Crises Reveal about Legal Systems and Economic Development around the World" methinks the recent attempt at the mendacity default swap and what Doug posted last night --which was expressive of managerial narcissism in the extreme-- is indicative that they're prepared to play all kinds of brinksmanship games in all their media outlets until they're overwhelmed by our cyborged pitchforks......So let's overwhelm them.
Ian