“Our people kind of thought it was a non-event,” one executive of a large bank said. “There’s nothing in there that’s radical. It’s not like the horrible and unethical action from Congress where they were putting artificial caps on pay or trying to steal back bonuses . . . I don’t think there are worries about it on Wall Street.”

From another source:

“The focus was really on a light touch approach,” [another] person added, speaking on condition of anonymity because the discussions are ongoing. “Nobody said the government needs to regulate with a heavy hand, like caps or micromanagement, but that investors needed more tools to increase disclosure and director accountability.”

Indeed, while the new compensation plan targets the top executives and highest-paid employees at the seven companies receiving the most bailout cash, executives at the hundreds of other bailed-out companies will go largely untouched. Example: While the plan places limits on bonuses (as mandated by an amendment passed by Congress earlier in the year), it limits the definition of “bonus” to exclude the commissions that send the pay for many traders soaring.

The Obama plan also scraps the $500,000 salary cap the administration had proposed in February for executives of bailed out firms. President Obama unveiled that cap with the statement that Americans were outraged with “executives being rewarded for failure.” Could it be that just four months later the White House no longer sees a problem with rewarding the same failure?

This is what happens when Wall Street runs the Treasury.

The current powers that be — both in Washington and Detroit — can’t be trusted to fix a problem they created, the Republicans say. From the statement out of Rep. John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) office:

The only thing crazier than trusting the same management and union officials who got the Big Three into this mess to get them out is trusting a bunch of Washington politicians and bureaucrats — the very same people who ran up a $455 billion deficit last year.

What the Republicans fail to mention is that they are “the very same people” referred to here. Indeed, when the GOP took control of Congress in 1994, the federal debt was roughly $4.7 trillion. Now it stands above $10 trillion — with nearly $3 trillion of the new debt amassed between 2000 and 2006, when Republicans controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress. (Another $1.5 trillion has arrived in the last two years under the Democratic-led Congress.)

Funny that no one ever forced a pay cut on these lawmakers for reckless management. In fact, Congress has given itself a pay raise nearly every year this decade.

Meritocracy, indeed.