Bailout Outcry: Stop Big Pay Packages for Bank Execs

Americans disagree on the bailout but many say Wall Street exec pay is too high.

ByABC News
September 23, 2008, 7:28 PM

Sept. 24, 2008 — -- Whether or not they support the government's proposed $700 billion bailout for ailing financial firms, many Americans seem to agree on at least one thing: Executives at firms that participate in the plan shouldn't continue receiving outsized compensation packages.

"CEOs who have failed should not get these huge golden parachutes," said Dave Fett, 47, a computer system administrator from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, who said he was against the bailout.

Fett was one of more than 300 people who responded when ABCNews.com asked readers to share their opinions on the bailout plan. He said that the losses suffered by the financial firms and their executives shouldn't be shouldered by taxpayers.

"They were making plenty on Wall Street and they weren't going to share it with you or me or anybody else," Fett said.

Karen Gipson, 56, a metal saleswoman from Olive Branch, Miss., said she supports the bailout.

But, she said, "I don't think we should have to bail out people who are supposed to know what they're doing in the first place, especially when you've got the CEOs of those companies walking out with millions of dollars. It's mind-boggling."

Between 2004 and 2007, the chiefs of the Wall Street brokerage firms and other companies that today are at the center of the storm -- including the heads of the now-defunct brokerage firm Bear Stearns, the now-bankrupt brokerage firm Lehman Brothers, ailing mortgage lender Washington Mutual and insurance giant AIG, which recently received an $85 billion loan from the federal government -- received a total of nearly $1 billion in cash, stock and stock options.

Congress is considering a measure that would force firms that participate in the bailout to limit executive compensation.

But for some, curbing executive pay isn't enough. Jeanne Donaldson, 67, a retired real estate agent in Athens, Ga., said those executives who helped package and sell troubled mortgage-backed securities should be subject to a criminal investigation.

"They packaged these up in investments and sold them -- essentially they were selling air," Donaldson said. "The ones who dreamed up this scheme should be prosecuted for fraud."