February 4, 2009
Pledging to take “the air out of golden parachutes,” President Obama announced Wednesday that executives of companies receiving federal bailout money will have their pay capped at $500,000 under a revised financial compensation plan.
$500,000 will be the limit on executive salaries at companies receiving tax dollars, President Obama says.Last year’s “shameful” handout of $18 billion in Wall Street bonuses “is exactly the kind of disregard for the costs and consequences of their actions that brought about this crisis: a culture of narrow self-interest and short-term gain at the expense of everything else,” Obama said to reporters at the White House.
“For top executives to award themselves these kinds of compensation packages in the midst of this economic crisis isn’t just bad taste—it’s a bad strategy—and I will not tolerate it. We’re going to be demanding some restraint in exchange for federal aid—so that when firms seek new federal dollars, we won’t find them up to the same old tricks,” the president added.
Dec 24, 2009
The top U.S. housing regulator said on Thursday it approved 2009 pay packages of up to $6 million each for the chief executives of government-controlled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The approvals were part of a wider decision by the Federal Housing Finance Agency on executive salaries at both firms. FHFA Acting Director Edward DeMarco said, on average, executive pay at the companies had dropped 40 percent from where it stood before the government seized them last year.
In filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the companies said Fannie Mae CEO Michael Williams and Freddie Mac CEO Charles Haldeman would each receive up to $6 million in total compensation for 2009.
Freddie Mac said the same figure would apply to the Haldeman’s pay package for next year, as well.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which play a role in funding three-fourths of all U.S. residential mortgages, were seized by the government and put into conservatorship in September 2008 at the peak of the credit crisis.
To continue playing that role in the U.S. mortgage market, Fannie and Freddie must “attract and retain the talent needed to accomplish these objectives,” DeMarco said.
The announcement came less than 24 hours after the Obama administration’s pay czar, Kenneth Feinberg, approved millions of dollars in pay for top executives at GM and GMAC. Feinberg oversees compensation plans at firms receiving money from the government’s $700 billion financial rescue fund.
SondraK, unapologetic Lympian Slayer 
