MuskogeePhoenix.com, Muskogee, OK

Editorials

Discussion

November 18, 2009

Talent drain not a factor

Let investment firm executives leave if they don’ t like restrictions on bonuses — that’s our advice to President Obama’s pay czar.

Kenneth Feinberg, the Treasury Department special master for executive compensation, recently said he was concerned that the talk about withholding or limiting bonuses for executives of companies receiving bailout money would drive them away. Feinberg said he worried the companies would suffer a talent drain.

We’re sorry, but the rules changed when these companies, some of them with the same personnel still at the lead, allowed greed to guide their companies into near bankruptcy with only the government to save them.

Let them go somewhere else if they can get a job. Certainly, plenty of bright people would enjoy an opportunity to work at these companies and do an honest, conscientious job because that’s the right thing to do, not just because of a huge compensation package. Besides, if they prove themselves valuable, they can move on just as the ones there can now.

But before huge compensation packages are considered for bailed-out company executives, make them get their companies on solid financial ground.

Text Only
Editorials