Obama's advisor charged with determining what executives can be paid at comapanies that received bailout money will not be capping bonuses, according to Reuters.

No matter what part of government you’re in, this has been a huge issue. The people at the local diner have been arguing over it all the way to Obama himself injecting it into his speeches.
While I’ll be the first to give a big, fat middle finger to Wall Street on this financial mess they have created by gambling on an international scale, it’s tough to say what to do about the folks who made a ton of money off of it. If we think of it as gambling, then it is certainly no-limit, and it should be restricted to areas reserved for entertainment and despondency like all other gambling. If we view it as criminal, as in, a more dressed up version of a Ponzi scheme that was never going to work out for anyone except the people handling the money, then we should be putting people in jail.

But, if we recognize that credit default swaps were a legal creation (a bad one, but a legal one anyway) that were traded on the legal stock market by otherwise law-abiding citizens who were working for established financial firms, then we are obligated to admit that those who traded well with all the crap did a really good job at it. Those who have traded well ever since then with their legal, Congressionally authorized U.S. bailout money have also done nothing but their job really, really well.

What I’m saying is- there is no way we could legally restrict bonus or compensation payments to top level executives at Wall Street companies. Regardless of what Michael Moore says or if I agree with him, there is nothing technically illegal about what Wall Street did. It should be illegal, but it’s not.

There are many instances of this in the history of the United States- we’ll get around to making it illegal in a few decades- I’m content to get the health care and climate change balls rolling. Maybe make sugar illegal, or taxed and restricted like alcohol, which is, afterall, sugar.

But I digress. Obama’s “Pay Czar” (could they stop with the czar thing already- these people are policy advisors to the president) said today that he will not cap compensation for top employees at companies that received bailout money. He added that he will not say who makes or made what in those companies.

"We don't want specific names next to dollars," said Kenneth Feinberg, who was appointed to decide just what executives can make at companies that got bailed out by the U.S. government.

What a job! Feinberg has decided not to cap pay, which is, as I’ve been talking about, a fair play- as is not revealing what individuals make. Where else do you see capped pay for legal employees of legal companies or individual salaries called out? It’s a tough job for Feinberg, with his team of 15 and other outside consultants expected to issue initial reviews of Bank payment plans soon.

While I don’t argue with his decision, hasn’t Obama been talking incessantly about curbing excessive executive bonuses? Where’s the consistency, Washington?