White House executive “pay czar” Kenneth Feinberg has decided not to negotiate with 17 Wall Street firms to rescind $1.6 billion in payments to executive that Feinberg himself described as “ill advised” and payments that “[t]hey should not have made,” according to articles in the Atlanta Journal Constitution (“Bank execs get to l]keep $1.6 billion” by Daniel Wagner) and CNNMoney (“Banks paid big $ to execs during crisis” by David Ellis).
Feinberg was quoted as saying: “I’m not suggesting we should blink or turn the other cheek. These 17 companies were singled out for obvious bad behavior. He question is: At what point are you piling on and going beyond what is warranted?” Are you serious? Unfair piling on? Poor banks.
The AJC said he rolled over because, incredibly, “he thought that shaming them was punishment enough.” Picture John McEnroe: “You cannot be serious!” Does anyone believe that Wall Street barracudas experience shame?
In fairness to Feinberg, the law apparently gives him no authority to compel Wall Street to give the money back. It requires him to “negotiate” with the banks to return the money, but only if he determines that the pay packages are “contrary to the public interest.” How anyone could imagine that Wall Street could be persuaded to give back money without any legal compulsion is a question science cannot answer. But Feinberg apparently decided the payments were not contrary to the public interest, despite his earlier tough talk about his ability to get them to pay it back.
Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders was quoted as saying: These people’s jobs were saved by the taxpayers of this country, and their response was to give themselves these huge bonuses. Many Americans lost their jobs because of this Wall Street greed. It is one of the reasons the American people are as angry as they are.”
The Wall Street banks that defied Feinberg and thumbed their nose at the taxpayers, according to the article, include, Regions Financial (which owns Morgan Keegan), SunTrust Banks, AIG, CIT Group, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, American Express, Bank of America, Bank of New York Mellon, PNC Financial Services Group, USBancorp, Boston Private Financial Holdings, Capital One Financial, and M&T Bank.