That gives me an idea. Let's give the banks $1 trillion and REQUIRE it to all be given to the executives. We'd get back more than $300B in tax revenues. What a great deal.

Damn I never thought of that. The progressives get screwed again

Slick move..Have to give the thieves credit

The statement being made now is worth more than $10B in tax revenue over the next 10 years.

The rationale is ludicrous.

First comes the classic Democratic negotiation ploy of conceding ground (useless tax-cuts) before the Republicans have even proposed anything, then comes Geithner's belly-flop on the bank plan, then comes emasculation of the CEO accountability plan despite Obama's claims that failure shouldn't be rewarded. This is beginning to look less like "Change" and more like "Chump Change". Not real happy with things right now.

This is reason enough to kill the whole bill. I've never been more angry.

Idiotic. Insane. Immoral....

I forget who said it, maybe it was Churchill, the cemeteries are full of indispensable men. I'll go one better, I'd be happy to do any one of their jobs for $400,000. And I guarantee you I could do no worse, and in fact a hell of a lot better, than any one of those greedy slugs. Hell even Joe the Plumber could do as good a job as any of them.

I don't get it. I pay taxes to the IRS, who gives the money to the failed bank CEOs, who put it in their pockets but have to pay tax on it. So how does this improve matters?

lemme get this straight. we have to pay more for the bailout (and it is more for the bailout--every extra dollar in bonuses is money out of the tarp), so that they can get their higher pay, so that we can get 30% of it back in taxes.

this is some convoluted logic.

AS my CPA friend is fond of saying: Why give up $40 just to get $20 in return?

The same analogy works here. If one of these fat-cats gets, say, a $10 million bonus, the entirety of which is funded by taxpayer money, we can look forward to a return on our investment of whatever lowly tax bracket this guy falls into. And thanks to Bush and his affinity for tax cuts for the rich, that is undoubtedly a nominal tax bracket considering the income level.

Yeah, that's a good deal, all right...

Well, this is a complete f'n joke. At this point, the feds should just nationalize the banks temporarily and clean up the f'n mess and then privatize after this crisis is over. That is the only solution. Also, the criminals that stole all of our money should be working the soup kitchens, not whining about compensation. The only solution is to nationalize. No more taxpayer money down these rat holes.

Executive compensation is deductible to the corporation that pays it. If you limit the compensation, then the corporation has less of a deduction and the corporation pays more in income tax.

The top corporate income tax rate is 35%, and the top individual income tax rate is 35%, so it looks like the same tax revenues either way.

The only way that restricting executive compensation results in a loss of tax revenue is if the corporation doesn't have enough profit to pay income tax, so the deduction doesn't reduce its taxes and the compensation results in a net tax increase. But that means that the compensation is coming out of shareholder capital, and that now means the U.S. taxpayer.

As others have pointed out, paying $100 out as bailout money just to get $35 back as taxes makes no sense.

Huh?

If we are losing $10.8 billion (over 10 years) in taxes that means these CEO ass-bandits are reaping a shit-load more than $10.8 billion in give-away bonuses, etc. for piloting the economy like a yard-dart.

Guess what, I will gladly lose the $10.8 billion in tax revenue if it means not spending hundreds of billions of tax dollars on the ill-gotten "bonuses".

I REALLY want to get into a game of poker with the Congressional clowns who can get rolled like a cheap cigarette, I could always use the extra cash.

I'm confused. There was a executive pay cap that was being put into the 800 stimulus?

I thought the cap applied to the TARP distribution.

AT a tax rate of 15% (Capital Gains tax rate - many traders claim their salaries as "capital gain" - aren't they clever), they would have to make $72 BILLION for the treasury to make their $10.8 Billion.

At a tax rate of 35% (the average for a "worker"), the Banksters would have to make only $31 BILLION!

OF TAXPAYER DOLLARS!

I propose that, instead, they increase the income of every man, woman and child in America by $100. At a tax rate of 35%, this would gain the treasury their $10.8 billion and more of that money would be spent on consumer goods than any Bankster could spend, no matter how many of his children he has to pay an annual $32,000 tuition for, no matter how many $45,000 nannies he hires (and they are all HEs), or how many years of $35,00 ball gowns he buys for his wife.

There is absolutely NO REASON the American taxpayer should pay outrageous salaries and bonuses to the very same people who bankrupted their industry.

These were the very same people that thought, year after year, decade after decade, that minimum wage was "too high". Now $500,000,000 a year isn't enough for a "real" person to live on.

They killed the golden goose - now let them eat it!

Ceo's are on notice of the ubiquitous New State of the art Definition of what the 5months ago mesmerising marketplace promise is now known as, and what the iminent new hard law glare actually means for them personally..no getaway. Thats enough for them?to run off or stay and do, according to each of them , oH and so from that cognisance theyre also now getting more prompt directed to be interested in personal up your veracity level, as the supplier of their sense of self. This is a new known standard, and its bombardment is directed as a gift to allow all directors actual breadth and acknowledgement and go on wrig room or prudent exit if in them it is absent.they can go work in a perfactory out of amplified possibles..and for those who are unsure whether their motivations are tangible ..well anew is also an a billion people wall wall lookin their way ..or at least that was the case 5 minutes ago