Seems like the Obama administration is moving toward setting pay rates.
Where is government given that responsibility?

It appears that the administration is working to make the public angry about executive pay as a way to be able to control it. Unions and Acorn-type groups are doing bus tours of the AIG execs. What is the purpose of that other than to encourage jealousy and rage?
I can think of another popularly elected administration that encouraged this kind of anger, rage, and hate. That did not work out too well.

Seems to me that the legal way to have attacked the problems at AIG, GM, and Chrysler would have been to advise them to declare chapter 11. That would have allowed them to void existing contracts and renegotiate better deals with their execs and unions. They would not have gone out if business under chapter 11, but they would have been given protection and time to reorganize.
Declaring that bankruptcy is "off the table" removes all incentives for creditors to settle. Why should they take 50 cents on the dollar when the government might give them 80 cents, or even the full dollar?\So now we have the prospect of the government deciding what is the appropriate compensation. Michelle Malkin wonders, in a recent commentary, will the productive class simply have a Galt moment, simply walk away? (Galt is the protagonist in Atlas Shrugged)

Capitalism is not dead (yet). but this government is doing its best to kill it.

I even heard one democrat Senator declare that she didn't care if their recently passed bill to tax AIG execs at 90% was constitutional or not--they had to do something!
That is scary--at least for anyone who believes in a constitutionally limited government. If they can do this ( pass laws that enact retroactive taxes om a specific group), what is to stop them from doing anything they dream up?
Is totalitarianism coming, or is it already here?

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1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags