Thanks to provisions in Tarp and the stimulus package, one man—the pay czar—gets a say on what bankers at firms receiving government aid get paid. But who is this pay czar? A moral grandstander like Eliot Spitzer? An Obama insider? As it turns out, Kenneth Feinberg is neither of those things.
He is up against a great deal of ire: As banks regain their strength in Washington, the pay czar job is looking like an increasingly dirty one. It’s a familiar environment for Feinberg.
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He was the lawyer charged with doling out settlements from the 9/11 Victims Fund and he negotiated payments with the families of Virginia Tech shooting victims. He has also dealt with payouts to people injured by Agent Orange, the chemical weapon used during the Vietnam War, according to the
In 2005, Feinberg wrote a
He’s getting a lot of attention these days, not much of it is coming in the form of laughter and applause. Feinberg is
It wouldn’t be unreasonable to guess that Feinberg would share the philosophy that led in the first place to pay restrictions. But it turns out he’s the anti-politico, having now served both the Obama team and the Bush administration before it. So while executive pay curbs may be the most theatrical of the regulatory actions taken thus far in response to the financial crisis, Feinberg has shown himself to be no ham.