What follows is my testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, delivered October 28, 2009. The topic was executive compensation and the Special Master for TARP Compensation, Kenneth Feinberg, who was determining compensation at the firms who had not repaid their TARP funds.
Americans are angry about executive compensation.
Rightfully so.
The executives at General Motors and Chrysler don't deserve to make a lot of money. They made bad products that people didn't want to buy.
The executives on Wall Street don't deserve to make a lot of money. They were reckless. They borrowed huge sums to make bets that didn't pay off. And they wasted trillions of dollars of precious capital, funneling it into housing instead of health innovation or high mileage cars or a thousand investments more productive than more and bigger houses.
Everyday folks who are out of work through no fault of their own want to know why people who made bad decisions not only have a job but a big salary to go with it.
No wonder they're angry at Wall Street,
But if we keep getting angry at Wall Street, we'll miss the real source of the problem. It's right here. In Washington.
We are what we do. Not what we wish to be. Not what we say we are. But what we do. And what we do here in Washington is rescue big companies and rich people from the consequences of their mistakes. When mistakes don't cost you anything, you do more of them.
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