Congress to America: Fuck You

I’ve been pretty quiet here because I’ve been so damn busy lately.  But I have to write something about the clusterfuck that is the economy and the government’s response to it.  It was bad enough that they offered the bailout package idea in the first place, but the fact that Paulson’s original plan was all about saving the people that created this very situation, and giving himself a near-complete autonomy over what happened with $700 BILLION.

Luckily, Chris Dodd stepped in and pointed out the scarier parts of Paulson’s plan including the Section 8 which stated that Paulson’s committee would be answerable to no other body – including the executive, legislative AND judicial branches of our government. That’s pretty scary stuff.

But what pissed me off was how they were ready to give carte blanche to the very executives who ran these companies into the ground.  The original plan had NO restrictions on executive compensation at all – but when people cried foul, the new plan that was up for the vote today added some.  At least in concept.

The new plan limited the compensation of how the companies could deduct the salaries of their top 5 executives:

If companies sell more than $300 million in assets in the auction, they will lose the ability to deduct the salaries of their top five employees that have exceeded $500,000. For participating companies there will also be a surtax of 20% on retirement packages of top executives who are involuntarily terminated from their firms, or lose their jobs as a result of the firm’s failure.” – Forbes.com

However, existing executives would NOT be prevented collecting on the golden parachutes they had already negotiated while they were pillaging the accounts during their bad decisions. So, in short – they took millions of dollars DURING the time when the economy was good and still managed to bankrupt their companies – and then would collect millions more for doing so and walking away.

In my opinion, the executives already got their money and screwed everybody from sideways. Any bill put out by congress to bail out these failed businesses (which I still feel is a bad idea in the first place, but understand in a macroeconomic sense), should contain two very important provisions – complete oversight of how the money is spent and complete restrictions on executive salaries – like the average wage of EVERYONE in the company. Or better yet – nothing.