Will Obama Take Everybody's Money?

That’s what a Drudge Report headline is implying:

Obama will call for increased oversight of 'executive pay at all banks, Wall Street firms and possibly other companies' as part of sweeping plan to 'overhaul financial regulation', NY TIMES reporting Sunday, newsroom sources tell DRUDGE... Developing...

Despite their primarily political motivations, I can understand public officials wanting to cap the bonuses of TARP recipients and take aim at AIG. But going after everyone else is just pure insanity.

If a company is not taking government money, then the government should not meddle with how much those companies pay their employees. The average CEO of a major company is dramatically overpaid, but it’s the shareholders job to complain.

If they don’t like what a CEO is getting paid, they should sell the stock or sack the Board of Directors, the latter of course being something that doesn’t happen nearly often enough.

Plus, how the heck will any troubled company (pick a bank, any bank!) find a new CEO? Being the CEO of a distressed company is an absolutely awful job. You have to be greedy or just a masochist to do it. Do you think Vikram Pandit likes getting up in the morning to go to work every day? The only way to get anyone with a brain to take a top post at Citigroup (C) or AIG (AIG) or General Motors (GM) is to bribe them!

Just about everybody out there wants the rich guys to take a hit. But arbitrarily deciding who makes too much money and who doesn’t smacks of extreme heavy-handedness and could in fact backfire on President Barack Obama. If this news is true, I just may regret my vote for him.

Let’s hope Drudge’s sources are wrong.