Remember those executive pay limits in the bailout bill? Well, forget them. They're done. At the behest of the Bush administration, the final legislation said the limits only applied "to firms that received bailout funds by selling troubled assets to the government in an auction." At the time, that was the Treasury's proposed method of aid, and so the insert was meant to ensure that only executives who brought their companies to be bailed out would be subject to the limits. But Treasury quickly dropped the reverse-auction idea. They've not used auctions for any of the $335 billion they've disbursed so far, and they have no plans to use auctions for the next round. "Lawmakers and legal experts say the change has effectively repealed the only enforcement mechanism in the law dealing with lavish pay for top executives." In other words, there are no more executive pay limits.
