Another brilliant policy initiative brought to you by Obamunism -

The Obama administration will call for increased oversight of executive pay at all banks, Wall Street firms and possibly other companies as part of a sweeping plan to overhaul financial regulation, government officials said.

As if the economy doesn’t suck enough, The One wants to make it suckier by stripping away all incentives to work hard, invest, etc…

Officials said the proposal would seek a broad new role for the Federal Reserve to oversee large companies, including major hedge funds, whose problems could pose risks to the entire financial system.

“Large companies”?  Can we have a definition please?  What is a large company?  I’m thinking the admin’s definition is slightly smaller than the Webster’s definition.  And who decides at what level the risk is too great?  Surely no one in this admin possesses the qualifications needed to make that judgement.

The administration has been considering increased oversight of executive pay for some time, but the issue was heightened in recent days as public fury over bonuses spilled into the regulatory effort.

Oh, are they referring to the absolutely insane response from our more deranged fellow citizens in response to the absolutely insane response from our elected officials who knowingly passed and signed into law said bonuses?  Take notice America, our leaders believe us to be dumber than pond scum.  Which could be true based on the fact we elected them.

The new rules will cover all financial institutions, including those not now covered by any pay rules because they are not receiving federal bailout money. Officials say the rules could also be applied more broadly to publicly traded companies, which already report about some executive pay practices to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Fan-tas-tic!  Just like they promised.  All companies, not just those “receiving federal bailout money.”  What a country!  Pretty much where we’re headed unless we vote these DA’s out of office PDQ!

Officials said the plan would also call for increasing the levels of capital that financial institutions need to hold to absorb possible losses. In a sign of the economic system’s fragility, officials said the administration would emphasize that those heightened standards should not be imposed now because they could discourage more lending. Rather, they would be put in place after the economy began to rebound.

Hmm, let’s translate this.  The admin fully recognizes that companies that don’t hold on to enough capital face collapse yet they are bailing out said companies. They recognize that limiting compensation and heavy regulation are not prudent at this point because it might discourage said companies from needfully investing in the recovery of the economy.  They are waiting until the economy rebounds.  Ask yourself this question – are you going to break your back to build a business and invest in the economy if you know that as soon as you start making real money, the government is going to show up with it’s New Rules’ Book and restructure your business, including what you pay yourself?  Or are you going to protect yourself?

Representative Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who heads the Financial Services Committee, said he believed giving the government new authority to take over troubled companies could be adopted by the House relatively quickly, particularly after the furor over the A.I.G. bonuses.

“This would give the government the same powers that you would get as if the company were in bankruptcy,” Mr. Frank said in an interview shortly after meeting with Mr. Geithner on the plan.

Oh geez, Barney Frank has his grubby paws on this?  Then you know this is just the icing on the crap bag. He’s been pilfering other’s people money for more than four decades.  And he’s getting hungry again.  They are taking advantage of the outrage you handed them on a silver platter over these exec bonuses (that they wrote into law, BTW) and running with it.  Did you really mean you wanted pay limits for all Americans, no matter how successful the business?  Did you really intend for the Feds to allow themselves to regulate all companies in America?  (You’ve seen how the run the Post Office, right?)  When you voted for Obama, you fully intended for him to rewrite the rules followed by business for time immemorial?  The guy at the top, who faces the most risk, is most responsible, makes the hardest decisions – he gets paid the most – or the least based on the performance of the business.  (BTW, the bonuses at AIG were retention bonuses, essentially severance pay, not performance bonuses.)

Don’t let him do it, America.  Start calling your representatives today.  Tell them you will not accept Federal encroachment into the private sector one centimeter more.  Let these yahoos know, before Obama and Geithner even finish proofing the Powerpoint, that you will not stand for government limits on how much money you, or any American, can make.  That unless a company asks for help (which they have already stopped doing based on these ridiculous policies which is why the government now has to write a law allowing it to stick it’s nose in everyone’s business) the government may not coerce a private company into accepting assistance of any kind, the government may not rewrite their business model, the government may not set limits on compensation.  Unless it also sets up a scale, as in if the top guy gets $500K, the bottom guy gets $6K.

I know many out there feel that this type of policy will result in some sort of economic parity between the haves and have mores – the have-nots will not see one dime more because they will still be stuck with government hand-outs – but it won’t.  Policies like this discourage investment, discourage risk taking, kill entrepreneurialism, and stifle growth.  This policy will surely lead to a major pull back in investment and growth, catapulting us into another Depression.  Hmm, maybe what they want?

I suppose I should go get started on my “There’s no chance of Victory” garden.

Great discussion at HotAir

*Excerpts above courtesy of the NYT – online of course, I’m not sending a nickel to that rag.

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