Poor old Ken Feinberg

The US now has more czars than Russia ever did. One of them is Ken Feinberg who is the Administration's pay czar. Feinberg does not have the best PR sense - he recently commented " "The private marketplace should be able to have the flexibility to adopt these programs on their own." - when responding to a question about whether it is appropriate to yank some perks for the execs in the bailout companies who received government money (and ultimately whether it is appropriate to extend his inane rules to companies operating in the private sector). I believe there are two issues here. Should Mr. Feinberg or any other government official have anything to say about private sector pay? The answer is NO. At the same time, we should ask should Mr. Feinberg have anything to say about compensation for executives who agreed to take the public money to help bail them out? There the answer is a resounding YES.

The WSJ says he is destroying the capitalist system. I say baloney. I am a strong believer in the market system and furthermore believe that compensation will help to attract the best people to run firms. But that is not the question raised by Mr. Feinberg's new limitations on executive compensation. The seven companies who have received TARP money did so because they said they needed it. OK, so when you use other people's money, even the people's money, you might get some new rules. Some of the other firms that took this dough had the brains to pay it back before Mr. Feinberg could slap his new requirements on them. Were the administration to try to extend their new rules to private sector firms we should all be up in arms. But since these "leaders" have tasted at the government teat, they should get to live by the new rules.