The lead article in this morning's Wall Street Journal fills me with disgust at corporate excess in this country.
Financial giants getting injections of federal cash owed their
executives more than $40 billion for past years' pay and pensions as of
the end of 2007, a Wall Street Journal analysis shows.
The government is seeking to rein in executive pay at banks getting
federal money, and a leading congressman and a state official have
demanded that some of them make clear how much they intend to pay in
bonuses this year.
But overlooked in these efforts is the total size of debts that
financial firms receiving taxpayer assistance previously incurred to
their executives, which at some firms exceed what they owe in pensions
to their entire work forces.
Were you paying attention to that last sentence? The executives' deferred compensation in some cases exceeds what firms "owe in pensions to their entire work forces." In what world do people fail to see this as not merely wrong, but so morally repugnant that it ought to be criminal?
