Obama gave two reasons when asked by Terry Moran of ABC News: 1) scale and 2) tradition. The second one makes sense because nationalization of the entire banking system certainly goes against the American ethos and the first one is debatable. Perhaps there really aren't enough competent people to run the banking system until it recovers and we KNOW that there aren't enough competent conservatives.
On the issue of executive pay, Obama seems unaware of the reality:
If you're not taking money, then we'll let shareholders and boards of directors handle things as they generally have handled them. I do hope that we're going to see a change in culture where everybody in the financial system starts recognizing that ... $100 million bonuses annually are not a birthright [LAUGHS] and that, you know, we've got to recognize that if you're going to reward people for success, you've also got to punish them for failure and that hasn't been happening.
The shareholders DON'T have a say in executive pay and the directors pretty much rubber-stamp what the CEO okays.
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2 comments:
What's your opinion of Hudson's take?
http://counterpunch.org/hudson02122009.html
Ken,
I've been worried that we've just been creating larger banks that are "too big to fail."
Hudson has close to a perfect description here:
"But the problem is not liquidity and it is not subjective “market psychology.” It is “solvency,” that is, a realistic awareness that toxic waste and bad derivatives gambles are junk."
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