I think this is a slippery slope and we need to be careful if we start down it. I think financial matters should remain private from the general public. However, I also think that there needs to be a way from some financial information to be seen by appropriate parties and then still remain a private from the general public.

Big brother has finally come - and he is US.

In today's world we are so concerned about transparency and disclosure that we seldom consider consequences. Will we place ourselves in well defined "classes" and be discriminated against even more than done now? Will we be marketed to differently? Will low earners be treated with even less respect that they are now? Will a deeper more well defined caste system appear?

Whats next? Bank balances? Jewelry inventories? Disclosure of ALL personal wealth?

This is not a slippery slope, it is a cliff. Publishing names will result in nothing good.

People will get mad. They will yell and screams and politicians will likely come to a flawed decision due to their need to placate a mob.

Companies and compensation consultants will get facts. These facts will be sued to craft packages that still pay large sums, but keep the mobs to a minimum.

The individuals will be ostracized by people who do not know them or even truly care about them. People are upset and rightfully so, but the ends to not justify the means in this case.

It may be important to change rules for the future of compensation. Perhaps requiring the disclosure of anyone who is in the top X% of the company pay, or people who make more than n-times the average pay of rank and file employees. Perhaps programs which guarantee pay in the event of failure may need to be highlighted. Regardless of the rules, specifically identifying the individuals who are generally part of the public record should still be handled very carefully. We have a right to privacy in this country. We can voluntarily give up this right, but it should not be taken away without our prior knowledge and permission.

If people know the rules in advance they can always refuse the pay that would put them in the "public information" category. Taking away this fundamental right to privacy is something I cannot support regardless of how annoyed I may be about someone else pay.

Dan Walter
Performensation Consulting
www.performensation.com

A lot of these issues are arising from the way in which the bailout was handled. The money was doled out in order to stave off bankruptcy of the financial firms - particularly in AIG's case the idea was to make counterparties whole. Letting the firms go bankrupt would have put the counterparties at risk and tied up claims in bankruptcy court.

While the govmt was busy watching the counterparties and the outstanding claims to creditors, they were ignoring the internal contracts for employees.

Now the Feds are considering slapping taxes on the bonuses of employees at companies that took TARP. This seems like pandering to the mob as the Fed puts another $1 Trillion in to the system.

Dobilas
Why is this a problem? Stockowner reports list the renumeration of corporate officers. That information is already publically available, as are the salaries of congressmen, senators, the president, cabinet members and public servants. When the financial entities became publically owned, their employees in a sense became public servants. I don't think they should get a special secrecy treatment. Obviously, a purely private entity should be allowed to keep it all to themselves, but employees of public corporations should be treated alike. Otherwise, secrecy leaves a suspicion of illegality or impropriaty, as was the case with ENRON, now it is with AIG, CITI. Merril Lynch, etc.

I don't think that anyone wants their privacy invaded, including information of one's earnings, etec. However, AIG is a very different story. After AIG's executives ran the comany to the ground, they asked for and were given funds to climb out of the hole. Their lender became USA taxpayers. As such, USA taxpayers should be able to have some control where their har earned dollars go. I, for one, do not want my money going to reward people that created this mess.

Rules already exist for publicizing executive compensation and/or the highest-paid at publicly traded corporations and at tax exempt entities. There are further IRS rules like IRC 4958 permitting Intermediate Sanctions to be levied against all insiders (board members or their advisors) who authorize excess benefit transactions funded with tax-subsidized money. That latter rule permits fining each or any party who approved the outrageous payment plus it requires a full refund of the payment to the entity. Unfortunately, the I.S. rule only applies to 501-cs at present.

This whole flap is an example of demagogues in Congress following the lynch mob and engaging in reckless populist gesture politics, not in part because they need to distract voters and discourage further calm investigation into the actual causes and original enablers here.

In a few years, there will be many movies and books telling us exactly what we obvously should have been feeling and doing right now instead of what is actually happening,