Government Pay Control

The next step in the socialization of several key industries is underway:

The Obama administration's pay czar is planning to clamp down on compensation at firms receiving large sums of government aid by cutting annual cash salaries for many of the top employees under his authority, according to people familiar with the matter.

Instead of awarding large cash salaries, Kenneth Feinberg is planning to shift a chunk of an employee's annual salary into stock that cannot be accessed for several years, these people said. Such a move, the most intrusive yet into corporate compensation, would mark the government's first effort to curb the take-home pay of everyone from auto executives to financial traders.

The government thinks these high-priced executives will simply bend over and take it. My guess is a lot of these guys, seeing what the government is doing to their compensation and knowing their actual value in the non-socialized business world, will simply quit, leaving the government-controlled businesses with a lack of high quality talent to run them. And thus the downward spiral of these companies will continue.