Say Nyet to the Pay Czar
We should have known this would end horribly. The first "red" flag was the administration inventing a job called Pay Czar.
There's a reason the communists whacked the last legitimate Czar and got away with it. The Red Army's horrifying power and sadism helped, but the real reason was the public figuring that Romanov's idiocy made it likely anyone else would be better.
Nicholas Romanov sent Russian troops to the front in World War I unarmed with instructions to use the guns of the dead Russian troops ahead of them. Pay Czar
Kenneth Feinberg is apparently set on fixing the markets by forcing banks to take half their pay in stock options.
You may remember stock options from the bubble days when everyone at Yahoo (YHOO) from the chief to the company chefs became zillionaires and retired in their 20s. That was about $300 in Yahoo share price ago. 
So, in an allegedly coordinated effort, the administration has openly rigged the stock market, bought General Motors, used taxpayer dollars to fund Cash for Clunkers (a program which curiously labeled cars like my Hummer and other toxic fog machine SUVs as "efficient"), and is now mandating stock options instead of cash for highly paid executives at firms that willingly or unwillingly took the low interest loans -- which were largely responsible for killing anything resembling a free market in the US.
Professional short sellers have, in effect, been sent to the front unarmed.
Perhaps most appalling is that the stock option lunacy of the Internet bubble fixed itself. That's how free markets are supposed to work -- when appalling policies are standard, artificial value is created.
The inevitable crash of the phony values forces companies to self-correct. In the case of options, the public revolted, new hires weren't willing to accept scrip pay when previous hires were 80% underwater on their options and the boards were forced to make the companies grow up.
Any first-year business school student could explain the lunacy of stock options instead of cash. They dilute shareholders and lead to absurd excesses and unintended consequences like the first receptionist hired being worth $50 million.
The business world regards options as a dangerous experiment gone horribly wrong. The non-business world charged with creating Czars of all sorts (apparently "Militant Dictator" was trademarked) regards mandating an insane dilution level of option pay as a panacea for a market collapse which already happened. 
If I had taxation with representation, I'd use it to pay for business people, or at least economists, placed in the role of aiding stock markets. Czar Feinberg was probably an excellent lawyer, but law is an entirely different field than business.
"Smart" isn't fungible, which is why you wouldn't let a brilliant waiter perform your brain surgery.
The administration hired a lawyer who doesn't remember business history less than a decade old, labeled him a Czar, and gave him free rein over pay levels in businesses for which he has never worked.
Spoiler Alert: This policy will end horribly unless it's somehow shoved in the crib by the lawyers we elect as senators, congressmen, and president.
How do I know? Because I actually worked in business and traded my way through the last options bubble.
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My objection is not to lawyers in general but rather the idea of given them the right to more or less dictate whatever they want to companies they don't seem to understand in order to assuage the market which they demonstrably have no clue about.
The stock option pay mandate will result in higher pay that dilutes the shareholders the Czar was ostensibly trying to reassure. The odds are decent that it will result in explosively high pay, given the fact of the manner in which the market has already been rigged.
Think of Citi. There is no logical argument for that company not being gone already. But now the government has openly said they are forbidden the market behaving in it's naturally merciless manner because Citi was declared "too big to fail". The stock is worth nothing but is utterly insane to short.
So, if say I was applying for job there (and I'd sooner play a pickle drum for tips in the subways but I'm just playing this out to illustrate a point). My negotiations would be based on the fact that the company lives only as a function of the government handouts and, because they were interested in hiring me to help make them actually viable, that made me a value adding employee in their eyes, simply by virtue of the fact I was sitting them, being asked to come aboard their corporate train wreck.
"I know the Pay Czar has handcuffed you in terms of making my pay 50% options" I'd say "but I'm not here to do charitable work for your bank. You're asking me to take a huge risk and telling me that I don't actually get enough cash to live a decent lifestyle. I can't buy groceries or a midtown condo with stock options, gentlemen. I understand your problem so I'm here to compromise, not make ultimatums. You pay me, say 75% of my total salary in cash. It's more money but still less than a what you'd have to pay me in cash if you were actually not on the dole. Obviously you'll have to match that cash bump with options but who knows what happens with them and, to be blunt, I can buy neither groceries nor a Ferrari with stock options. They are effectively entirely worthless to me for at least 5 years. So, because I have to take half my pay in options I need my total pay increased by 50% from your offer. You can hire me on those terms or try your luck with someone else but, to be honest because I'm an honest guy, if you find a person willing to take on the absurdly difficult task of getting your Titanic of a quasi-bank into New York and he's willing to work for half of what he's worth in cash and a bunch of largely useless stock options he's more or less signaling that he's not qualified to help you.
"You're not Meals on Wheels. You're a hopelessly jumbled mix of businesses and most of them, along with most your shareholders, have managed to incinerate money in ways previously impossible to comprehend. I'm here to make money for you and for me. If I only get paid half in cash you have to raise my total salary in a big way. You have my terms and my phone number. Call me when you make a decision"
Effectively raising total pay is the only way firms will be able to hire talent with the proposed/ leaked plan. I don't particularly hold lawyers in light regard. One of my mentors from childhood was a college buddy of my dad's and is now a partner at Charlie Munger's (Buffet's closest friend) firm in LA. Because of him I actually went to a birthday party and watched the Oracle of Omaha himself strum a ukulele and sing "Happy Birthday" to my friends wife with a few off-color and hysterical lyrical variations. I mean, that's just an insanely cool event to be invited to and one of those memories you always think of but don't discuss because it sounds so name dropping.
My entire point was that The Czar is making obviously flawed and aggressive changes and he either doesn't understand what he's doing or he's got a team of high school interns as advisors. He's demonstrably unqualified and, lawyers or not, the Democrats have the power and they'll go along with the plan regardless of what they think of it. Obama is popular and smart enough to more or less demand a unified front from his party.
It's simply an appalling decision with horrific implications. I'd believe that assertion to my soul regardless of who proposed it.
Peace.
I don't demand perfection. I simply want our unelected dictators to follow the medical golden rule: Above all, do no harm.
It's not a lot to demand.
She is so on the money with her fight that I found myself waving my hands in the air as though I were at a religious revival or rap show. Then I settled down and simply accepted that I have a crush on her.
