Special Insp. Gen. for TARP says Treasury Dept. failed to rein in excessive pay.

[No Elephants]

The U.S. Treasury Department “failed to rein in excessive pay” at bailed-out American International Group Inc. (AIG), General Motors Co. (GM) and Ally Financial Inc. (ALLY), the rescue program’s inspector general said.

Sixteen of the 69 top employees at the three companies had 2012 pay packages worth at least $5 million and all but one had total compensation of $1 million or more, the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program said in a report today. Since much of the pay is in stock, only three of the executives had cash salaries of more than $1 million.

Despite previous warnings by the special inspector general that the Treasury “lacked robust criteria, policies and procedures” to curb excessive pay, the department “made no meaningful reform to its processes,” according to the watchdog known by the acronym SIGTARP. “SIGTARP found that once again, in 2012, Treasury failed to rein in excessive pay.”

Christy Romero, the special inspector general, said AIG, GM and Ally “convinced Treasury to roll back its guidelines by approving multimillion-dollar pay packages, high cash salaries, huge pay raises, and removing compensation tied to meeting performance metrics.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-28/watchdog-says-u-s-treasury-failed-to-curb-aig-gm-pay.html

At the time, Senator Dodd said that he had put into Tarp II something about executive compensation and Geithner asked him to delete it, so Dodd did. Maybe Dodd thought he successfully passed the buck by saying that, but he had a responsibility to exercise his independent judgment, too.

I hate to ask, but wasn't Elizabeth Warren in charge of administering TARP funds? Or was this kind of thing above her pay grade as administrator of the funds?


{div class=excerpt]In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, Warren served as chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel created to oversee the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).

<snip>



On November 14, 2008, Warren was appointed by United States Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to chair the five-member Congressional Oversight Panel created to oversee the implementation of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act.<31> The Panel released monthly oversight reports that evaluated the government bailout and related programs.<32> During Warren's tenure, these reports covered foreclosure mitigation, consumer and small business lending, commercial real estate, AIG, bank stress tests, the impact of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) on the financial markets, government guarantees, the automotive industry, and other topics.

[Enthusiast]

1. Those responsible need their ass kicked.

The end.