The Huffington Post’s Shahien Nasiripour interviews Kansas City Fed President Thomas Hoenig, a fierce opponent of too big to fail, who, among other things:
Lambasted the tilted playing field that benefits Wall Street banks over Main Street banks;
Called the idea that the U.S. needs megabanks to compete globally a “fantasy”
Tell that to Paul Krugman. Please!
Nasiripour says, correctly, that Hoenig has “emerged as one of the few influential voices calling for a fundamental redesign of a broken U.S. financial system.” It’d be nice to hear more from him in the mainstream press.
— The Washington Post points out that some parts of the financial industry are right back to encouraging short-term thinking with their compensation practices. Money quote (no pun intended):
“I see no indication whatsoever that the business community is paying any attention to the administration’s suggestions,” said Nell Minow, co-founder of the Corporate Library, an independent corporate governance research firm. “On the contrary, I think pay is worse this year than it’s ever been.”
And:
American Express, for example, shifted much of chief executive Kenneth I. Chenault’s compensation to cash. Even though his overall pay for 2009 dropped from the year before, Chenault received $11 million, or two-thirds of it, in cash. By contrast, more than two-thirds of his compensation in 2008 was in stock and stock options. His cash payout was $7 million.
At Wells Fargo, the company more than tripled the cash salary this year of chief executive John Stumpf, and Corning, a glass and ceramics maker, restructured its long-term incentive pay program — previously centered on stocks and stock options — to focus more heavily on cash.
— In good news for consumers, the Journal reports that the Federal Trade Commission crackdown on misleading credit-report sites has begun.
In a bad lede, though, the WSJ writes:
Starting today, credit-reporting bureaus will have to work harder to ensure consumers won’t get fooled.
As if they weren’t trying to fool consumers in the first place. That was the whole point.
