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<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nThat’s the message the\u0412\u00a0Obama Administration sent when it announced their plan<\/a> to cap executive salaries for financial institutions that receive Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) assistance from here on.<\/p>\n This move\u0412\u00a0was made\u0412\u00a0in the wake of abuses of the bailout money\u0412\u00a0last year under the Bush Administration\u0412\u00a0to fund corporate perks and boost executive salaries through high-dollar bonuses valued in the billions.<\/p>\n Under the original TARP Program developed by former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the banks that received bailout funds were\u0412\u00a0already subject\u0412\u00a0to limits on compensation, but the Bush administration intentionally left them lax<\/em>. Under the new restrictions proposed by the Obama Administration, the top five executives at banks receiving\u0412\u00a0government TARP assistance are restricted from offering lavish perks to\u0412\u00a0executives.\u0412\u00a0Any compensation above $500,000 is not tax deductible to the company.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In defining the principals of the new rules to be included in the bailout, National Economic Council Chair Lawrence Summers wrote that \u0412\u00a0\u0432\u0402\u045aexecutive compensation above a specified threshold amount be paid in restricted stock or similar form that cannot be liquidated or sold until the government has been repaid.<\/em>\u0432\u0402\u045c<\/p>\n Once again, back to instructions: When you take out a loan from the US government, you must make sure what you borrowed is paid back before you give yourselves lavish perks. If this seems like\u0412\u00a0the\u0412\u00a0United States government is\u0412\u00a0trying to corral behavior that’s gone visibly out of control, then your assumptions are correct. It appears the corporate interests that had their heydey\u0412\u00a0during previous Republican administrations perceived themselves as above common sense, common decency and the law.<\/p>\n Year after year, from Nixon to Reagan to George Bush Sr. and George W. Bush, the free market was unfettered and unregulated. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), once formed by the Roosevelt Administration to circumvent future depressions by oversight and regulation designed to prevent market fraud and abuse by banks and lending institutions, was close to dismantled by four Republican administrations and congressional majorities in the latter half of the 20th century. What\u0412\u00a0should have been the\u0412\u00a0center of regulation was made toothless by the hiring of staff under-equipped to handle or regulate Ponzi-scheme masters like Bernie Madoff, who is now under federal investigation and house arrest for bilking billions from investors, taking money that was never invested in anything and ruining\u0412\u00a0lives and institutions across the world.<\/p>\n Obama was correct in delineating the cutoff point from where the Bush Administration’s TARP Program would end and his would begin. There is, as Obama said, “one President at a time.” The clear difference between Presidents\u0412\u00a0and the theme for today\u0412\u00a0is accountability where there once was none.<\/p>\n From the Iraq War to the economy, the operating principle for the last eight years under the\u0412\u00a0Bush Administration was to “privatize the success and socialize the risk.” That means corporate cronies reaped financial benefits while the public took the fall in dollars and lives.\u0412\u00a0During the last eight years it started with Enron and ended with TARP, but this principle has really been in effect since “morning in America” under the Reagan Administration. De-regulation was the operative word.<\/p>\n Today’s instructions, administered by the Obama Administration, are step one in what will probably be many more to unravel what has been done to the country over the last 30 or more years. How appropros of an administration begun under a Moon void in Scorpio and Mercury Retrograde: digging deeply underneath the surface of what’s been obscured and re-doing it to make it right. Thankfully, President Obama makes these new regulations while Mercury is direct.<\/p>\n And now a\u0412\u00a0word of warning before we lose our collective memory or minds and even dare to think that perhaps we can toy with the idea of having Republicans back in power in Congress or in the White House.\u0412\u00a0\u0412\u00a0Please read this<\/strong>.<\/a> That’s Richard B. Cheney,\u0412\u00a0true head of the Republican Party and all its interests hoping that the country will be mired in a deep depression or fall prey to a terrorist attack, which they then of course can use to make political gains against Obama and re-establish Republican\u0412\u00a0power in Washington and Wall Street.<\/p>\n They don’t care if the country lays in ruins or that lives will be lost, as long as they regain control. Cheney leads amongst the many with the cold darkness of heart that allowed massive greed and lust for blood and power to spin out of control to begin with, bringing this country and the world to the brink. Please, let us never allow that to happen again.<\/p>\n Lather. Rinse. Repeat.<\/p>\n Yours & truly,<\/p>\n Fe Bongolan<\/strong> Dear Friend and Reader: Lather. Rinse. Repeat:\u0412\u00a0 When you ask\u0412\u00a0the government for money to bail you out\u0412\u00a0of trouble, please don’t use it to\u0412\u00a0purchase a corporate jet. Don’t buy your company expensive week-long retreats at\u0412\u00a0lavish spas when you get the government check, and PLEASE don’t pay yourselves salary\u0412\u00a0bonuses totalling $18 billion. That’s the message the\u0412\u00a0Obama Administration … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1,14,762],"tags":[1788,1772,52,544,994,313],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10703"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10703\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nSan Francisco<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"