Questions of equity

摘要

It is easy to understand why many in Congress and beyond have demanded salary caps on bank executives as a condition of approving the Bush administration's bail-out of the financial system. After all, many of the people who will be leading the effort to get the banks back on their feet were the very same masters of the universe whose greed and myopia brought the industry to its knees in the first place. Nonetheless the lawmakers' apparent decision to impose some form of still unspecified wage limit, a demand reluctantly accepted by Hank Paulson and the Bush administration this week, is a mistake.rnJust now, it is a struggle to keep a straight face when you read the words "talent" and "Wall Street" in the same sentence. And yet, precisely because it is in a mess, the financial system will need decent managers if it is to return to the health that benefits the rest of the economy.