Democracy Coming To The Board Rooms? Geithner Has A Plan

You may have noticed that there aren't many big fans of Obama's economic team here at DWT. Summer and Geithner seem more determined to represent Wall Street and corporate interests than the interests of ordinary working families. But it's not as black and white as it is under Republican regimes. Yesterday, for example, Geithner was actually pushing a real pro-business proposal that's actually good for business and for investors and for society-- not just something for upper echelon corporate management of the type politicians usually support. It's a small step in the right direction. He told reporters today that Obama wants Congress to pass new laws giving regulatory agencies power to compel public companies to let shareholders have more say in setting executive pay and bonuses.

Pay packets for executives that sometimes are several hundred times what average employees earn have angered the public since the U.S. Treasury began pumping hundreds of billions of taxpayers' dollars into banks to keep them afloat.

Geithner said Treasury wants Congress to pass two specific pieces of legislation. One would give the SEC authority to oblige companies to give shareholders a non-binding vote on pay packages for top executives.

...Geithner has said previously that Wall Street compensation practices became "divorced from reality" in the period before a severe financial crisis set in that helped drive the U.S. and much of the global economy into a recession that continues today.

CQPolitics, however, makes it clear that Geithner's upraised, clenched fist for democracy isn't too clenched or upraised and certainly not for too much democracy. He only wants a non-binding vote by stock holders-- the owners of the companies-- over what management gets to pay itself.

Barney Frank is holding a hearing on the proposals today. He has a much more proactive (and pro-shareholder) view that Geithner. “I believe that we should be going beyond the proposals the secretary makes with regard to the compensation structure," he told The Hill.I wish the damn TV anchors would let the members of Congress answer the questions they ask instead of being argumentative and interrupting and not letting them speak. It's disgraceful. Barney managed to make his case on MSNBC anyway: