Is The White House Helping Bailed Out Banks Skirt Pay Caps?
On Saturday the Washington Post reported that the administration was doling out federal bailout money via “special purpose vehicles” to help banks skirt restrictions on the funds imposed by Congress — including, naturally, limitations on executive pay. In a move a former Justice Department attorney equated to “money laundering,” the story further specified that the White House had concluded that the conditions ought not to apply in “at least three out of five initiatives funded by the rescue package.” The story quoted Treasury spokesman Andrew Williams defending the strategy, and on Sunday senior Obama adviser David Axelrod, despite his reported distaste for Treasury’s lenience on the banks, went on Fox News Sunday and towed the Treasury line when Chris Wallace brought up the report. But a bit later the same morning on Face the Nation the policy seemed to have changed — if you believed Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s unequivocal denial to CBS’s Bob Schieffer that any such plan comp
