According to reports, executives from bailed out companies Citigroup, Bank of America, GM, Chrysler, GMAC, Chrysler Financial and AIG are going to see major pay cuts this year, which will be enforced by the president’s “pay czar,” Kenneth R. Feinberg. WaPo:

NEW YORK — The Obama administration plans to order companies that have received exceptionally large amounts of bailout money from the government to slash compensation for their highest-paid executives by about half on average, according to people familiar with the long-awaited decision.

The administration will also curtail many corporate perks, including the use of corporate jets for personal travel, chauffeured drivers and country club fee reimbursement, people familiar with the matter have said. Individual perks worth more than $25,000 have received particular scrutiny.

The American people have every right to be upset about generous compensation packages for executives at financial firms that are being kept alive by subsidies and bailouts.

But their ire should be directed at the bailouts, because that is the policy that redistributes money from the average taxpayer and puts it in the pockets of incompetent executives. Unfortunately, rather than deal with the underlying problems of bailouts and intervention, some politicians want to impose controls on salaries. This might be a tolerable second-best (or probably fifth-best) outcome if the compensation limits only applied to companies mooching off the taxpayers, but some politicians want to use the financial crisis as an excuse to regulate compensation at firms that do not have their snouts in the public trough.

This would be a big mistake. So long as rich people make money using non-coercive means, politicians should butt out. It should not matter whether we are talking about Tiger Woods, Brad Pitt, or a corporate CEO. The market should determine compensation, not political deal making. Markets don’t produce perfect outcomes, to be sure, but political intervention invariably produces terrible outcomes.

I debate this further on CNBC:

C/P The Hill

U.S. Cutting Pay for Bailed Out Company Executives is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

• How to measure the effectiveness of Obama’s stimulus plan.

• Forbes: The CBO estimate of the number of people who would stop being uninsured under the Senate Finance Committee proposal is exaggerated by at least 7 million to 10 million.

• Smoke and mirrors within the Senate Finance Committee?

• How to save democracy in Honduras.

• Video: Economist Daniel J. Mitchell discusses economic reform on CNBC.

Tuesday Links is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Did you know that the average American family spends $1,000 each year on the U.S. Department of Agriculture, whether or not it consumes that agency’s services?  Or that the federal government annually spends $1,500 per household on net interest costs alone?

In an ongoing effort to shed light on runaway government spending and expose wasteful government programs, Cato launched a new Web site today that examines the federal budget department-by-department to see which agencies can be reformed or terminated. DownsizingGovernment.org describes which programs are wasteful, damaging and obsolete in an era of trillion-dollar deficits.

The research exposes that many public outlays—though vigorously defended by the politicians who created them and the constituencies they purport to help—are remarkably ineffective at achieving their core aims.

Here are just a few examples:

• Though the Department of Education’s annual budget has more than tripled in real dollars since 1970, that period has not been marked by any tangible improvement in student performance.

• The Department of Housing and Urban Development operates a rural subsidies program even though hundreds of other federal programs benefiting rural constituencies already exist.

• HUD has been characterized by scandalous graft and cronyism under both Republican and Democratic presidents for three decades. The rate at which senior HUD officials have been investigated or prosecuted is chilling, and government watchdogs have found dozens of instances where officials’ private-sector contacts were showered with public money for projects.

Appearing on CNBC Monday, DownsizingGovernment.com editor Chris Edwards explained more about the site:

Plus, keep track of where your tax dollars are going by following DownsizingGovernment.com on Twitter (@DownsizeTheFeds) and Facebook.

Cato Launches New Web Site Exposing Wasteful Government Spending is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The good folks over at Freedom to Trade recently filmed an interview with me about the implications of the China tire tariffs:

And if you just can’t get enough about the ramifications of the tire tariff, check out this Canadian Business News clip from yesterday, or this one from CNBC today.

Tire Tariff Decision Won’t Soon be Forgotten is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Appearing on Larry Kudlow’s CNBC show, I warn that tax-and-spend policies are turning California into an American version of France. But for those who want all the gory details, Reason TV has an excellent new video.

The Terminator Turns into a Spendinator is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

That’s an apt way to describe this week’s health-care-reform media blitz by the White House.

It’s probably also a good way to describe this debate over that media blitz:

Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Here are a few highlights from Cato Today, a daily email from the Cato Institute.

• Dan Ikenson and Scott Lincicome argue in a new study that restoring the pro-trade consensus must be a top priority for the Obama administration.

• In the DC Examiner, Gene Healy discusses Obama’s first 100 days and argues that he’s massively expanded the power of government in a short period of time.

• In the Asia Times Online, David Isenberg discusses private security contractors in the war in Iraq.

• Watch Patrick J. Michaels discuss energy on CNBC.

• In Tuesday’s Cato Daily Podcast, Peter Van Doren discusses the interaction between Congress and regulators on the issue of food safety.

New at Cato is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Health care, Jonathan Cohn, and me.  All in one place on CNBC at 8pm tonight.

UPDATE: Here’s the video.

Cato on CNBC is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

G-20 Summit Agrees to International Spending Plan

The Washington Post reports, “Leaders from more than 20 major nations including the United States decided Thursday to make available an additional $1 trillion for the world economy through the International Monetary Fund and other institutions as part of a broad package of measures to overcome the global financial crisis.”

Cato scholars Richard W. Rahn, Daniel J. Ikenson and Ian Vásquez commented on the London-based meeting:

Rahn: “President Obama of the U.S. and Prime Minister Brown of the U.K. will be pressing for more so-called stimulus spending by other nations, despite the fact that the historical evidence shows that big increases in government spending are more likely to be damaging and slow down recovery than they are to promote vigorous economic expansion and job creation.”

Vásquez: “The push by some countries for massive increases in spending to address the global financial crisis smacks of political and bureaucratic opportunism. A prime example is Washington’s call to substantially increase the resources of the International Financial Institutions… There is no reason to think that massive increases of the IFIs’ funds will not worsen, rather than improve, their record or the accountability of the aid agencies and borrower governments.”

Ikenson: “Certainly it is crucial to avoid protectionist policies that clog the arteries of economic recovery and help nobody but politicians. But it is also important to keep things in perspective: the world is not on the brink of a global trade war, as some have suggested.”

Ikenson appeared on CNBC this week to push for a reduction of trade barriers in international markets.

With fears mounting over a global shift toward protectionism, Cato senior fellow Tom Palmer and the Atlas Economic Research Foundation are circulating a petition against restrictive trade measures.

Obama Administration Forces Out GM CEO

President Obama took an unprecedented step toward greater control of a private corporation after forcing General Motors CEO  Rick Wagoner to leave the company. The New York Post reports “the administration threatened to withhold bailout money from the company if he didn’t.”

Writing for the Washington Post, trade analyst Dan Ikenson explained why the government is responsible for any GM failure from now on:

President Obama’s newly discovered prudence with taxpayer money and his tough-love approach to GM and Chrysler would both have more credibility if he hadn’t demanded Rick Wagoner’s resignation, as well. By imposing operational conditions normally reserved for boards of directors, the administration is now bound to the infamous “Pottery Barn” rule: you break it, you buy it. If things go further south, the government is now complicit.

Wagoner’s replacement, Fritz Henderson, said Tuesday that after receiving billions of taxpayer dollars, the company is considering bankruptcy as an option. Cato scholars recommended bankruptcy months ago:

Dan Ikenson, November 21, 2008: “Bailing out Detroit is unnecessary. After all, this is why we have the bankruptcy process. If companies in Chapter 11 can be salvaged, a bankruptcy judge will help them find the way. In the case of the Big Three, a bankruptcy process would almost certainly require them to dissolve their current union contracts. Revamping their labor structures is the single most important change that GM, Ford, and Chrysler could make — and yet it is the one change that many pro-bailout Democrats wish to ignore.”

Daniel J. Mitchell, November 13, 2008:  ”Advocates oftentimes admit that bailouts are not good policy, but they invariably argue that short-term considerations should trump long-term sensible policy. Their biggest assertion is that a bailout is necessary to prevent bankruptcy, and that avoiding this result is critical to prevent catastrophe. But Chapter 11 protection may be precisely what is needed to put American auto companies back on the path to profitability. Bankruptcy laws specifically are designed to give companies an opportunity — under court supervision — to reduce costs and streamline operations.”

Dan Ikenson, December 5, 2008: “The best solution is to allow the bankruptcy process to work. It will be needed. There are going to be jobs lost, but there is really nothing policymakers can do about that without exacerbating problems elsewhere. The numbers won’t be as dire as the Big Three have been projecting.”

Cato Links

• Is Portugal an example for the future of drug policy? Cato released a new case study this week by Salon writer Glenn Greenwald entitled, “Drug Decriminalization in Portugal: Lessons for Creating Fair and Successful Drug Policies.”

• As the North Atlantic Treaty Organization celebrates its 60th birthday, there are signs of mounting trouble within the alliance and increasing reasons to doubt the organization’s relevance regarding the foreign policy challenges of the 21st century. In a new study, Cato scholar Ted Galen Carpenter argues that NATO’s time is up.

• Should immigration agents target businesses knowingly hiring illegal immigrants? Cato scholar Jim Harper weighs in on a Fox News debate.

• Cato scholar Gene Healy warns, “Beware of the Cult of Obama,” in this week’s Washington Examiner column.

• Sign up today for  Cato University 2009: Economic Crisis, War, and the Rise of the State.

Week in Review: ‘Saving’ the World, Government Control and Drug Decriminalization is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

In a CNBC spot with Steve Liesman & Erin Burnett, I tried to explain why investors in bank stocks had good reason to be pleased with part of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s speech.  Judging by the response of Steve and Erin, and others on CNBC over the following day,  I must not have been persuasive.

For clarification, I am quoting the exact language from Bernanke’s talk, with my emphasis added.

My main point is that Bernanke admitted that when it comes to the “financial crisis” of some big banks, this is largely an artifact of unduly harsh regulation being applied at the worst possible time:

There is some evidence that capital standards, accounting rules, and other regulations have made the financial sector excessively procyclical–that is, they lead financial institutions to ease credit in booms and tighten credit in downturns more than is justified by changes in the creditworthiness of borrowers, thereby intensifying cyclical changes.

For example, capital regulations require that banks’ capital ratios meet or exceed fixed minimum standards for the bank to be considered safe and sound by regulators. Because banks typically find raising capital to be difficult in economic downturns or periods of financial stress, their best means of boosting their regulatory capital ratios during difficult periods may be to reduce new lending, perhaps more so than is justified by the credit environment. We should review capital regulations to ensure that they are appropriately forward-looking. . .

Bernanke emphasized the regulators’ dangerous habit of raising capital requirements and loan loss reserves simply because of a strict mark-to-market misinterpretation of the “fair value” of mortgage-backed securities.

He noted that:

Determining appropriate valuation methods for illiquid or idiosyncratic assets can be very difficult, to put it mildly. Similarly, there is considerable uncertainty regarding the appropriate levels of loan loss reserves over the cycle. As a result, further review of accounting standards governing valuation and loss provisioning would be useful, and might result in modifications to the accounting rules that reduce their procyclical effects without compromising the goals of disclosure and transparency.

The key here is Bernanke’s criticism of the rigid use of Basel capital standards, not mark-to-market information per se (which would be harmless if it did not trigger foolish regulations). When combined with Barney Frank’s similar comments on the same day, it begins to look as though sensible economics might finally take priority over dubious bookkeeping.

Why Bank Stocks Rose on Bernanke’s Remarks is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Cato Executive Vice President David Boaz debates Heather Boushey, senior economist at the Center for American Progress, over the legacies of Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan.

In light of the current economic crisis, who serves as the better role model for President Obama?

For more videos, subscribe to Cato’s YouTube channel.

New on YouTube: Roosevelt v. Reagan is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog