Speaking of executive pay, Chris Hayes has a nice column on the subject in the latest issue of The Nation, including this sharp observation from Nell Minow:
[C]orporate governance expert Nell Minow says that, counterintuitively, massive future payouts for CEOs are being "spring-loaded" into the system. "They're resetting all their benchmarks and options grants at what they know is a low point," she says, "so that when the market comes back they are going to rise with the market, having done nothing themselves. That's what we saw in the '90s: up to 70 percent [of gains from stock options] are attributable to market gains as a whole, and yet executives argue it's pay for performance."
Combine that with all the stock bank CEOs bought just prior to the recent bull market in the financial services sector and something tells me these guys will pull through just fine.
--Noam Scheiber