The Ultimate Control: Obama's Pay Czar

Unreal:

We sure have seen a lot in the nearly five months that Barack Obama has been president. Who could have imagined that the government would be controlling certain financial institutions? Who would have thought that General Motors would be under the control of Obama? Who knew that it was possible to create more debt in five months than all previous presidents combined? Welcome to the new America.

But, it doesn't stop there. We've heard so much weirdness coming from Obama like the jobs that have been "created or saved," when job losses continue and the unemployment rate keeps going up, but it doesn't stop there. Today we see yet another step down the path to government control, and another effort by Obama to take freedom away from the American people. In particular, I'm talking about Obama's new plan to appoint a "Pay Czar" to monitor what people are getting paid. We have now entered the Twilight Zone...

As noted in an Associated Press story, "the Obama administration is ready to issue new regulations limiting the compensation of top executives at financial institutions that have received government rescue funds." FOXNews.com reports that the position will be a "pay czar" formally known as a "special master for compensation." Special master for compensation? Are they serious?

Naturally, they say it's only going to be for companies that took TARP money.  Right.  They also said this would revive the economy, provide millions of jobs, and have lots of oversight and transparency.  Wrong, wrong, and wrong.  Oh, and they don't even know if TARP is working or not.  Oh, and don't forget that little fact that the government forced TARP money onto banks whether they needed it or not (here, here, here).  Nah, surely we can trust them when they tell us that this will only be TARP institutions.

Let's read on:

...regardless of whether a financial institution received government funds, the government has no business telling the institution how to run itself. Wages, regulations, policies, etc. are established by the company or institution. They form contracts between management and employees. That is how companies are run. For Obama to now say that he wants to control what they get paid shows two things: 1) it further reveals his desire to move America toward more and more government control. 2) It shows that Obama has no understanding of business.

If Obama limits the salaries of top executives at companies A, B, and C, don't you think those executives are more likely to go work for companies D, E, and F? What does that do for companies A, B, and C which are already "troubled?" I guess we already know the answer to that one when we look at General Motors: government "ownership" of production.

And this brings us back to some suggestions that we've already discussed here: a full takeover of the entire sector.  Of course, with this new talk of appointing a 'pay czar', the idea is that much closer to becoming reality.

Centralized government would certainly be a drastic change from the entirety American history and every founding principle of the nation...but is it a change that we want, or that would be good for America?

You decide.

There's my two cents.