Joe Kernen is a great guy but today he was very wrong. While discussing the salary of the Citibank CEO he invoked socialism as the doctrine that would require reduction of his salary. As the matter of fact, he is keeping his outrageous salary due to corporate socialism that is protecting rich and powerful non-performers. In capitalism, somebody owns a company and either runs it himself or employs somebody else. If the company goes south he loses money (too bad if he is in charge, if he employs somebody else, he is fired). But in public companies today, shareholders "own" the company but they gave all the power to the Board. The company goes south, everybody in charge has golden parachutes. They may fire workers but the big brass will collect what was protected with iron-clad contracts as their due.
In this case, Citibank and others are only technically not in bankruptcy. If this was 1929 their stock would probably go to 12 cents a share or something. Nobody, including CEO, would get any money without approval of the bankruptcy judge. But the company today is on government's life support. It seems that we still would need to ask some judge as to how much money to pay everybody there.
Also, stop talking about the present CEO's as some meritocracy of people "who know how to get job done". There are few of these but most of them just securely climbed the corporate ladder with a lot of irrelevant factors helping them. Most of them could be safely replaced with other guys and nobody would see a difference.
So, let us stop the corporate socialism and introduce the capitalist notion of cruel personal responsibility. The working people who do not do the job well get fired. No mercy for their supervisors and CEO's.
By the way, a Republican today stated that these companies will not do well as long as the government owns interest in them. As if they got there by performing well in the first place, my friend.
In this case, Citibank and others are only technically not in bankruptcy. If this was 1929 their stock would probably go to 12 cents a share or something. Nobody, including CEO, would get any money without approval of the bankruptcy judge. But the company today is on government's life support. It seems that we still would need to ask some judge as to how much money to pay everybody there.
Also, stop talking about the present CEO's as some meritocracy of people "who know how to get job done". There are few of these but most of them just securely climbed the corporate ladder with a lot of irrelevant factors helping them. Most of them could be safely replaced with other guys and nobody would see a difference.
So, let us stop the corporate socialism and introduce the capitalist notion of cruel personal responsibility. The working people who do not do the job well get fired. No mercy for their supervisors and CEO's.
By the way, a Republican today stated that these companies will not do well as long as the government owns interest in them. As if they got there by performing well in the first place, my friend.
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