Word: limits
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...response to public outrage over just about everything the financial industry has done in the past few years - from selling us trick mortgages and flimsy securities based on those mortgages to paying themselves astronomically while enjoying perks like private jets - the Obama Administration has proposed a $500,000 pay limit for the top honchos of any company that accepts money from the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Said President Barack Obama: "We all need to take responsibility. And this includes executives at major financial firms who turned to the American people, hat in hand, when they were...
...tiered program, with extra restrictions applied to basket cases like AIG, Citigroup and Bank of America, all of which tapped the federal till for hundreds of billions of dollars to recapitalize their broken balance sheets. In addition to the cash limit, the "maximum wage" plan allows companies to reward "senior management" - a complement of no fixed definition - with restricted stock, but it can only be cashed in after the government is paid back. There are also prohibitions against golden parachutes as well as a clawback provision - the company may reclaim that stock if its results subsequently tank - that can extend...
...second-tier companies that want government money, there's a golden-parachute limit of a year's compensation. The $500,000 pay and restricted-stock limits still apply, but shareholders (not a friendly constituency these days) can waive them in a nonbinding advisory vote, and management can act accordingly. (Read "Why Your Bank Is Broke...
Some of the friction could just be cosmetic to appease both the progressive base and moderates. "It's the old routine of bad cop (Pelosi), good cop (Obama); partisanship vs. bipartisanship," says Stephen Wayne, a political science professor at Georgetown University. "It is also a bargaining tool to limit what the Republicans can expect from the legislation in exchange for their support...
...officials offer a triumphalist explanation in which the Islamist militants simply wilted in the face of Israel's overwhelming firepower. By this reasoning, Israel had overinflated the Hamas threat. The militants are able to lob dozens of crude, badly aimed rockets into southern Israel, but that may be the limit of their abilities. And Israeli officials are congratulating themselves on their tactics. "Hamas and [Lebanon's] Hizballah are worried that Israel has broken the DNA code of urban fighting," says reserve Brigadier General Shalom Harari, while cautioning that Hamas' military leaders are probably already at work planning ways to block...