President Barack Obama is restricting your annual compensation to $500,000.
Here’s a handy Q&A regarding this unprecedented action that you can post on one of your many Sub-Zero refrigerators. Refer to it often as you adjust to the global economic collapse that you helped cause.
Q: Where does Obama get off telling me what I can make?
A: So far, Obama’s decree applies only to companies receiving “exceptional assistance” from U.S. taxpayers to keep them from melting down like those giant ice sculptures at your daughters’ weddings.
Q: What constitutes “exceptional assistance”?
A: A billion here, a billion there. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t take all that much.
Q: Are we a bunch of socialists, letting the president decide executive salaries?
A: Yes, thanks to you. You begged for a government bailout. You got it. This makes the government your shareholder. And you report to your shareholders in the same way your housekeepers report to you.
Q: Since when? Executive compensation goes up every year. Shareholder proposals to curb it are routinely shot down by my vast networks of powerful friends, no matter how poorly we perform.
A: It’s one thing to loot the shareholders. It’s another to rob the taxpayers.
Q: OK. So if we stop asking for bailouts, Obama will stop dictating pay cuts?
A: Nope. Obama says this is only the beginning: “We are going to examine the ways in which . . . executive compensation contributed to a reckless culture and quarter-by-quarter mentality that . . . helped to wreak havoc on our financial system.”
Q: Isn’t this just a populist, diversionary tactic on Obama’s part so that he can spend $900 billion more on his porky projects?
A: Yes. And you of all people should envy his strategic gifts, which were finely honed right beside you at Harvard. Besides, if things keep getting worse, you will beg Obama for another pay cut, just to hold the line on rising sales of guillotines.
Q: So that’s what this is about? Class warfare?
A: Actually it’s a war on the classless. People in America love the rich. What they don’t understand is why certain idiots are grossly rewarded for spectacular failures. So far, you have been lucky. But now that you are plundering the U.S. Treasury in plain sight, your luck has run out.
Q: I need more money. When can I cash my restricted stock options?
A: Not until your company pays back the taxpayers. This could take a decade. But at least you will learn what it’s like being stuck in the same hopeless job for 10 years.
Q: My plane is getting old already. How can I get a new one?
A: Try to find one for less than $50 million. That seems to be a threshold Citigroup could not cross while receiving taxpayer assistance. Of course, now that you are only making $500,000, your time isn’t all that valuable anymore. Maybe you can now afford to fly commercial and languish at airports.
Q: What about taking care of my peeps? Wells Fargo couldn’t even take a junket to Las Vegas.
A: “The event is not a ‘junket’ for executives but a four- day business meeting and recognition event for hard- working team members,” Wells Fargo has said in a statement. Still, taking the crew to Vegas after begging for a bailout can give folks the wrong idea. Try taking a trip that doesn’t implicitly involve gambling. Hilton, for instance, has a suitable place in Branson, Mo. And it’s a good bet your “peeps” have never been to the Roy Rogers Museum or the Sunday Gospel Jubilee.
Q: I just bought a $500,000 Maybach. Does Obama seriously expect me to work a whole year for just one lousy car? How am I going to afford to put gas in this beast?
A: Welcome to the middle class.
Q: Middle class? This is more like minimum wage, isn’t it?
A: The federal minimum wage is $6.55 an hour, or $262 a week before taxes. At this rate it takes nearly 37 years to earn $500,000, and that’s assuming you actually work 40 hours a week.
Q: Work? Why can’t I just jump out with my golden parachute?
A: Obama said he would take the air out of those too. Ideally, even an executive making as little as $500,000 should at least feign a commitment. You don’t want to blow it. There soon may be nowhere else to work besides taxpayer-supported companies. Except for maybe pawnshops, and they can help you with your Maybach problem.
Q: Just my mortgages cost me more than $500,000 a year. How am I going to pay those?
A: One place to start is Operation Hope’s mortgage crisis hotline: 888-388-HOPE. Remember, there is always hope. Embrace the audacity of it.
Al Lewis 201-938-5266 or al.lewis@dowjones.com
