New Freddie Mac CFO Will Make $5 Million In His First Year
The pay package given to Freddie Mac’s new chief financial officer should have sent a message from Washington to corporate America about how executive compensation standards must change. Instead, it did just the opposite.
The government-controlled mortgage finance company is giving CFO Ross Kari compensation worth as much as $5.5 million. That includes an almost $2 million cash signing bonus and a generous salary that could top $2.3 million.
Not only is Freddie Mac one of the entities most responsible for the financial meltdown (along with Fannie Mae) it had to be massively bailed out. The Treasury pumped in 51 Billion dollars into Freddie Mac in the last year.
Just this week Obama’s pay Czar announced a massive intervention by the government setting limits on what executives could make at companies that received bailouts. The Obama administration also announced that they intended to dictate pay packages at financial institutions that didn’t receive bailouts. What in the world gives the US Government any right to dictate what someone can earn?
But in the case of Freddie Mac, a quasi government agency, there is no limit. They can drastically overpay a guy because the rules don’t apply to the government.
The Obama adminstration is Bass Ackwards in everything. The right thing to do is to shut down Fannie and Freddie and get the government out of the financial services industry.
