Take refuge by listening to opera
President Obama has just appointed a “Compensation Czar” whose job it will be to determine the salaries and bonuses of some of the top executives in America, including Kenneth D. Lewis, the chief executive of Bank of America, Vikram S. Pandit, the head of Citigroup, and Fritz Henderson, the chief executive of General Motors, all three now in good part owned by the US government.
The President’s (actually, that of the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, who didn’t want the job) appointee is a well-known Washington lawyer, Kenneth R. Feinberg.
And as we read in today’s NYTimes article:
“Mr. Feinberg became a nationally known figure after he was assigned by the Bush administration to help settle possible lawsuits by the families of victims of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. His job was to put a value [yes] on the lives of the victims [!] and offer government settlements to avoid lawsuits.
“Mr. Feinberg met with many of the families and spoke around the country about how intellectually challenging and emotionally difficult the assignment became.
“Feinberg often sought refuge by cloistering himself in a room in his home to listen to his extensive opera collection.”
It is comforting that the Czar listens to opera. At least for me anyway, for I too turn to opera in highly stressful situations. I’m with him in this. I wonder how the reporter learned about it. Did Mr. Feinberg himself make the listening habit known?
In any case the reporter did recognize just how nicely this tidbit of information fit into what otherwise risked to be a cold and unsettling fact, Geithner’s (Obama’s) decision to have Feinberg, now in the role of a government bureaucrat, telling us (a few of us anyway), although not yet such things as what we could wear or where we could live, but awfully close, what we could earn.
For later and considerably more information on this same subject go to: Jim Kuhnhenn (6/11/09) and Nocera (6/13/09). The bottom line that Geithner and now Feinberg seem to be struggling with is that somehow executives shouldn’t be rewarded for taking imprudent risks resulting in significant losses to shareholders and the public at large.
