Treasury Dept. Punishes Bailout Recipients with Pay Raise

As you may have seen on the news ticker scrolling underneath the 24-hour balloon boy coverage last week, the Treasury Dept. announced big cuts in compensation for top execs at companies that received bailout packages (AIG, Citi, Bank of America, GM, GMAC, Chrysler and Chrysler Financial).

Well, according to a Wall Street Journal report this morning, pay czar Kenneth Feinberg did slash TOTAL compensation by roughly half.

Turns out, he also gave them a raise.

Confused?

I'm sure Czar Feinberg is hoping you are.

Seems after slashing compensation, poor Kenny started getting a little executive push back for his measures.

Apparently some corporate heads thought K-Fein's actions would make it difficult for companies to retain their top talent. (You know, the same top talent that ran the world's strongest economy into the shitter? Yep, wouldn't want to lose that talent.)

So, obviously not wanting to screw himself out of a high-paying banking position once he left the U.S. Treasury, he agreed to boost the base salaries of the 136 employees under his watch to an average of $437,896.

This includes DOUBLED salaries for 13 of the 21 employees at 34% Gov't-owned Citigroup, who, by the way, recently slashed my personal credit line in half for a tardy payment completed unrelated to the credit card I have with them.

Sometimes the phrase "Go fuck yourself" seems altogether too cocksuckingmotherfucking cordial, doesn't it?

Additionally - the WSJ article states - this move also seems to contradict Feinberg's promise to do away with the short-term incentives and guaranteed cash that fueled the reckless actions leading to economic disaster, and instead focus more on tying pay to long-term performance.

But whatever, yo! What do we have to worry about anyway? The Dow is up! Billions are being made again on Wall Street! Fiscal crisis averted! Oh...wait.