BAD NEWS FOR THE MOTU, GOOD NEWS FOR AMERICA

Back in 2008, AFLAC became the first major U.S. company to give owners (shareholders) a say on the pay of top executives and now the SEC has approved a rule, unfortunately non-binding, that lets owners of publicly traded companies a say on MOTU compensation.  In other good news, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission has referred some people and institutions to the Justice Department.

UPDATE: Atrios reports that some of the Wall Street MOTU are in serious legal trouble:

E-mails Suggest Bear Stearns Cheated Clients Out of Billions
Jan 25 2011, 1:01 AM ET
The Atlantic

Former Bear Stearns mortgage executives who now run mortgage divisions of Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Ally Financial have been accused of cheating and defrauding investors through the mortgage securities they created and sold while at Bear. According to e-mails and internal audits, JPMorgan had known about this fraud since the spring of 2008, but hid it from the public eye through legal maneuvering.

Ex-EMC [Bear Stearns mortgage servicing] analysts admitted they were sometimes told to falsify loan-level performance data provided to the ratings agencies who blessed Bear's billion-dollar deals.

They say senior traders under Tom Marano, who was a Senior Managing Director and Global Head of Mortgages for Bear and is now CEO of Ally's mortgage operations, were pocketing cash that should have gone to securities holders after Bear had already sold them bonds and moved the loans off its books.