House Committee Limits Bonuses

Just as the financial crisis reached its climax, the public was outraged to discover the unbelievably excessive bonus compensations that many Wall Street executives were taking as the rest of the country suffered. Now, the House Financial Services Committee has approved a bill given federal regulators the power to ban incentive pay at banks and shareholders the ability to vote on bonuses.
 
Under the proposed legislation, the Securities Exchange Commission to prevent any compensation practices that would end up constituting excessive risk. However, the bill still must be approved by the House and the Senate before it gets viewed by the President, so those calling for Wall Street accountability have a while to wait.
 
The Obama administration has already gone so far to help limit excessive compensation practices on Wall Street, but the new legislation is aimed to quell the political outrage that has stormed since the news of certain executives’ greed broke. There is still plenty of debate surrounding the bill, though, as Republicans have uniformly denied voting for the bill because they believe that the bill would essentially allow the government to decide executive pay.

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