Will new Executive pay rules cause a brain drain?

[J]

There's a sort of circular logic in the arguments used to justify the high valuation of these people.

Q: "Why are they paid so much?"
A: "Because they're the best there is."
Q: "But how do we know they're the best?"
A: "Because they're the highest paid. Do you think they would get so much money if they weren't the best?"

It would be funny if it weren't happening in real life.

Of course they're the best, of course they deserve the highest pay. Why? Because they're the ones who've succeeded best at buying off the government and funneling taxpayer money straight into their own pockets. This is a rare talent possessed by those outside the walls of Goldman-Sachs.

Getting back on topic, well, let's see, if those companies failed then they weren't that bright in the first place were they? For instance, if the Bank of America execs had functional brains they'd have run far far away from their buyout of Countrywide Financial a few years ago, it didn't take a genius to figure out that Countrywide's books were overflowing with bad mortgage loans in bubble areas. Anyone taking an honest look at Countrywide's balance sheets at the time of the merger could see that it was a disaster, and in fact there were people on the record with that opinion. Bank of America went ahead anyway since it would allow them to leverage up and commit more fraud for "profit", without the bailouts they'd be dead several times over by now. Yup, best and the brightest indeed.

On another note, the government owns them so it can set whatever payscale it pleases. It says so in the TARP/ESSA and other bailout bills which were passed last fall. If the company takes TARP money they have to play by the government's rules, if they don't like it they can refuse the money or pay it back. What's that? They'll go bankrupt if they do that? Oh isn't that too bad, that's the price of Capitalism.

[Pelranius]

I really don't see any kind of an Atlas Shrugged coming, nobody is going to pay these guys what they are used to and what they want overseas, so if they want to go, go. There is plenty of people more than happy to take a crack at their jobs, with the same schooling, same technical knowledge, and same ambition, and would probably do it for less than the current crop in this recession. To think it is a brain-drain implies that anyone who knows how to do it will go else where, which is ridiculous and self serving to the current crop.

I wish they would all go try to start up their little Galt's Gulch. Better throw in those dung flinging folks at the Ayn Rand Institute.