Obama Caps Executive Salary at $500,000 Wall Street Whines

So the executives who ran their companies into the ground get $100,000 more than the president. It's a start. But Wall Street is already complaining. Heidi Moore at the Wall Street Journal says Americans just don't understand, that's not the way that Wall Street execs get paid.

But now there are little to no profits, and Wall Street bonuses are being called into question by everyone from Joe Six Pack to President Obama. So this year’s scuffles could easily escalate into a fight to the finish, with the infighting highlighting tensions among fiefs fighting for the long-time survival of their payouts.

I think we understand perfectly. If Wall Street doesn't like it, DON'T TAKE THE MONEY:

CNBC: The proposals drew a mixed reaction, from Washington to Wall Street to Corporate America..

“Golden parachutes and limits on pay fundamentally tie into whether you’ll be able to hire and recruit people to work at these large troubled companies. These new rules may make it difficult to recruit quality candidates in the future ," said Claudia Allen, who chairs the corporate governance group at Neal Gerber & Eisenberg, a Chicago-based law firm." However, this move is symbolic in that it sends a strong message to all companies, not just those receiving bailout funds. Obama is sending the message that companies need to focus on pay for performance." Obama's move comes amid public outcry over $18.4 billion in bonuses paid out in 2008 at a time when taxpayer money was shoring up the financial system.

Read the White House release on executive compensation.
Obama's statement.

Financial services industry pay in perspective from the Economic Policy Institute:

The financial services industry pays its chief executive officers (CEOs) more than any other industry, averaging $18,876,000 in 2007. The oil and gas industry, however, is a close second with average CEO pay of $18,406.000. Financial services is also the highest paid sector for CEOs if one examines the pay of the median CEO in each sector—the one whose compensation is greater than half but less than half of the other CEOs: the median CEO pay in financial services was $16,433,000 in 2007.

Read more.