Shocked!
A former Hewlett-Packard chief executive who left the troubled company with a severance package worth an estimated $21 million to $42 million, Fiorina also bucked the populist tide against lavish corporate salaries by denouncing President Obama’s effort to cap annual pay at $500,000 for leaders of banks taking federal bailout money.
“When somebody makes $40 million a year for failure, we cannot defend that,” she said. “On the other hand, I believe the solution should be, every CEO’s pay should be put up for shareholder vote each and every year. Let the shareholders decide.”
I am shocked—SHOCKED!—that someone who ran a company so poorly that she was paid more to go away than I’ll earn in a lifetime believes that pay ceilings are a bad idea. Shocked!
But as to the second part—isn’t the government a very large stakeholder in every bank on which they are trying to impose capped executive salaries? So they should have a say in compensation, based on her statement. It’s either that or (a) she doesn’t know what she’s talking about, or (b) she doesn’t care what she says or whether it holds up against any level of scrutiny so long as it seems to match with the misshapen driftwood that comprises the contemporary Republican platform.
It’s gotta be one of those three, right?
