According to ABC News, on the same day that Chrysler filed documents with federal bankruptcy judge Arthur Gonzalez to terminate 789 dealers, the bankrupt automaker is scheming to reclassify its top suits as Fiat employees. The change would allow the execs to avoid the bailout-related federal salary limit. “In documents filed in bankruptcy court, the company said senior Chrysler ‘officers’—the company’s top executives—can be considered Fiat employees ‘seconded’ to Chrysler, and therefore be paid by Fiat beyond the $500,000 cap set by the government.” The smoking gun: “Any such seconded officer may receive supplemental employment compensation from Fiat . . . notwithstanding any ‘cap’ on compensation payable to such officer . . . under any Law, rule or policy applicable to the Company.” The MSM is bound to take this story and run with it. Which isn’t going to help ChryCo on the forecourt or in court after dealers file the inevitable class action suit against, uh, someone.
I have no doubt that some of the executives at Chrysler are worth whatever it takes to keep them from leaving. Perhaps the one whose bankruptcy statement the other day gave us some insight into the financial streams and material flows needed to operate a manufacturing industry is one of them. It is short-sighted of the PTFOA to try to play the wealth-envy game against them. But I also see that there was a political necessity to set such limits. This accelerated politicization of the auto industry, I think, will hasten Government Motors’ demise rather than help it to recover from its zombie status.
So Robert…are you in support of salary caps? Really?!?!? What if tomorrow Obama steps up to the podium and announces a $25,000 cap per year for any and all bloggers and websites? That would not be good…
The crime here or ‘smoking gun’ is not in circumventing the so-called salary caps, but in the near-criminal idea that a government should be able to control one’s income or compensation. Federally imposed salary caps are one of our first steps towards all-out socialism. No thanks. This is just more BS class-envy crap.
If the current administration keeps this up, you will see a defection of U.S. companies to even more off-shore facilities. U.S. investment firms are losing talent everyday to ‘foreign’ investment firms on Wall St. and so long as the Feds feel they can control your income, this will continue to happen. If y’all want caps on your income, then the country is sunk…I’m moving to Dubai.
Is the Federal government paying Robert to keep TTAC in business? No? Then he can make as much money as he wants to.
If you take TARP funds, you become a civil servant, and therefore should make less money than the President of the United States does ($400,000). If you don’t like it, DON’T TAKE TARP MONEY!
Food for thought:
Rewind about two and a half years.
Had there been salary caps in place at The American Road, one W.C. Ford would not have had the ammo to entice a certain A. Mullaly to leave the sylvan dales of Seattle for the big city and bright lights of Dearborn.
I propose, were that the case, today FoMoCo would be getting stripped and flipped right along with its cross-town rivals.
The free market certainly isn’t perfect, but it’s got an awful lot going for it.
Circumventing the salary caps says a lot about the execs: personal short-term gain is more important than the general overall health of the company. Perhaps it also says that the execs themselves think the companies are doomed so they intend to take as much personal profit as possible and as quickly as possible.
If you’re taking federal money, then you’re abiding by federal rules. Done. As for salary caps in general, I don’t care who gets paid what if they’re not pleading with Congress to get money to keep them afloat.
TaurusGT500: “a certain A. Mullaly to leave the sylvan dales of Seattle”
Um, I think by that time Boeing had moved its headquarters to Chicago. But I hear Chicago is pretty much a sylvan dale, too.
If the execs work for Fiat an Italian company, why would the US Govt have any authority over how an Italian company pays its employees? Fiat didnt run old chryco into the ground.
If the TARP folks were serious about the issue, they would address the entire cost of labor throughout the industries for which they are loaning money to. The real cost of labor and salaries is not the few dozen execs at the top whose compensation rarely exceeds 5% of total labor and compensation costs. No,no, no..the real cost is everyone else below the executive ranks. Now since the majority of those below the executive rank are labor…i.e. U.A.W. voters they don’t dare place a salary cap on them, eh? A few years ago, a judge in the Delphi C11 case said (and I paraphrase) that ‘the going rate for labor in this country is around $12.50 an hour‘ …If that is true, and salary caps are ‘fair’ in light of taking TARP money, than why doesn’t the administration set a U.A.W. salary cap at $12.50 an hour?!?!?I guess the administration knows what side of the bread the butter goes on. The salary cap is pure class-envy pap and does not address the real issue of overall labor costs.
Can we cap the salaries of Congress too?
Stu, you are correct that the salaries of the top execs are a small fraction of the company’s total labor costs. However, that misses the bigger point that these execs–already having pocketed millions of $$$ while running the company into the ground–are coming back for an additional helping of cash. This is astoundingly bad PR for the companies. How are these execs going to negotiate with the labor unions about pay cuts and huge, retroactive pension cuts when the execs themselves are taking extraordinary steps to circumvent temporary salary reductions to $500k?
So Robert…are you in support of salary caps? Really?!?!? What if tomorrow Obama steps up to the podium and announces a $25,000 cap per year for any and all bloggers and websites? That would not be good…
If Robert went begging to the government and recieved financial assistance then yes, he’d be beholden to certain conditions. But he didn’t, so he won’t.
In the same way, Chrysler and it’s associates are benefitting from government largess. As such, they have to abide by those conditions and restrictions. If they don’t want to, then can damn well give the money back.
Um, I think by that time Boeing had moved its headquarters to Chicago. But I hear Chicago is pretty much a sylvan dale, too.
True dat… HQ in Chi-Town … Mulally and commerical planes div were still in WA.
I don’t hear anyone on here screaming about executive salaries at Federal contractors….They take ‘Federal Money’ without it being a loan. Yes, they do indeed provide a service or a product and employ thousands of people, but let’s take a look at their CEO compensations for those who feel that anyone who takes ‘Federal Money’ should fall under a salary cap of $500,000.
Boeing: CEO James McNerney…Salary $1.9 Million. Stocks and Bonus $14.4 Million. Total Comp: $18.9 Million including perks, comps, retirement benefits.
Lockheed-Martin: CEO Robert Stevens…Salary $6 Million. Stocks and Bonus:$16.6 Million. Total Comp:$26.5 Million including perks…retirement benefits etc.
Raytheon Corp: CEO William Swanson…Salary $4.3 Million. Stocks and Bonus $5.2 Million. Total Comp: $24.4 Million including perks, retirement benefits…
And the list goes on and on…this is the kind of money men like Mulally are used to. If the Feds were serious about controlling costs, salary caps etc…they would address these salaries too. But they don’t-they reserve the salary cap pap for the companies that take TARP and Federal Reserve loans. Federal contractors, TARP etc are all part of the ‘Federal Money’ right? But yet, the TARP loan folks have to abide by a salary cap that other Federal contractors do not.
The real point is that federal money is not being used to “save the American automobile industry.” In Chrysler’s case it’s been used to stave off bankruptcy for a few months and hand the remains off to a foreign firm. So what’s the payoff? Where’s the national interest in spending money saving what will soon be merely a division of a foreign automaker?
Are you serious Stu comparing a successful company like Boeing selling goods and services that the government wants to purchase with a company receiving funds soley as charity like GM.
I say your right let there be no salary caps but not one dollar of Federal money should go to the big 3 let them die and the salary will be zero.
Geeze PCH101 was right about how Detroit fans seem to be a bunch of ingrates. They want the money but no strings and what they consider interference by none Detroit outsiders.
As part of this plan, then, Execs shall be required to:
1) Move to a suburb of Rome & live on a 350sq ft apartment with no elevator.
2) Ride a 125cc or less scooter to work. NO subway/metro.
3) Eat Casu Marzu.
Tell me, what do the management for other government owned businesses get in compensation? Do the federal government own any businesses? What does the head of FBI get in payment? If GM and Chrysler is run by taxpayer money, the management of those companies should get paid what other similar government-run companies get.
They want the money but no strings and what they consider interference by non Detroit outsiders.
It’s a lot easier for them to do what they do best — in the case of Detroit, destroying every dime of value in their companies — if there aren’t those annoying outsiders who actually understand business to interfere with their progress.
Still, I’m personally less worried about salary than I am about competence. There hasn’t been an incompetence cap for a long time, and we could have used one.
At the end of his grand tenure, Rick Wagoner was earning $1 per year. In my opinion, that was at least $1,000 too much.
His pay was the least of what was wrong with him. He destroyed billions of dollars in value — that’s “billion,” with a “b” — through sheer ineptitude. With a guy like that, compensation is the least of our worries. The greatest expense came from having him in the driver’s seat, and the cheapest thing to do would be to replace $1 Rick and his protege-interim CEO with someone who costs more but earns the wage.
Talent isn’t cheap, and we’ll be shortchanging ourselves if we don’t let them pay for it. Value for money is what counts.
I agree PCH but in my experience generally most people who happens to be in charge regardless of talent claim and actually believe they have talent even when it is lacking. The existing management and Detroit fans want the same old no talents to stick around and still receive top pay
maybe you should have run a photo of the Bridge of Sighs instead of the ponte vecchio.
U.K. firm Manifest Information Services, which analyzes proxy information, estimates Toyota’s top executive, Hiroshi Okuda, earned $903,000 in 2006.
IMHO, Chrysler CEO should not worry about $500K cap at least until Chrysler gets half as good as Toyota was in 2006.
in my experience generally most people who happens to be in charge regardless of talent claim and actually believe they have talent even when it is lacking.
That’s why a competent board matters. They hire the CEO, so they had better choose wisely.
Manifest Information Services, which analyzes proxy information, estimates Toyota’s top executive, Hiroshi Okuda, earned $903,000 in 2006.
I’m reasonably sure that a burger flipper at a McDonald’s in Marrakesh earns less than does his peer in Milwaukee. There isn’t much of a comparison, because the market for burger flippers is different in the two places.
The same thing applies to CEO’s. US CEOs of large companies can earn more money, so if a certain US industry or company underpays by a wide margin, it will lose access to a lot of talent. Unless US CEO pay is slashed across the board, there isn’t much point in comparing a US pay plan with a Japanese one.
What if tomorrow Obama steps up to the podium and announces a $25,000 cap per year for any and all bloggers and websites?
If Robert went begging for a “loan” from Obama, then yes, Obama gets to tell Robert how much he can earn.
What IS IT with all these people that forget, these companies asked for this. No one put a gun to their heads and made them go to DC and demand tax money. They could have, and should have, declared BK.
As a taxpayer and unwitting participate in the crime, I am glad that there are caps. Keep your hands out of my wallet and I’ll keep mine out of yours.
Stu Sidoti:
“I don’t hear anyone on here screaming about executive salaries at Federal contractors….They take ‘Federal Money’ without it being a loan.”
While it’s true these companies and execs you mentioned take federal money they are run as successful buisinesses, so I don’t think it’s a good comparison. I’ll do you one better. Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac execs got multi-million dollar bonuses. They are tied to the federal teat much more than a defense contractor. And they did not run these quasi government organizations in a sterling manner. And yet all we heard about was the AIG bonuses.
I love all these people who accuse Obama of socialism and tyranny. I wonder if they even consider that the only reason these companies have to face salary caps at all is because they ran their companies into the ground and are now begging for money from the only entity that still has any.
It is now beyond blatantly obvious these men care only about getting paid and care nothing about the success of the business they’re supposedly so good at running they deserve that salary. They have effectively become embezzlers.
Executives are like diamonds: they’re extremely expensive for reasons that have nothing to do with quality and rarity. They conspire with each other to raise their own pay and all Stu Sidoti can bring himself to care about is the cost of manual labor. Chrysler’s execs could be working with SLAVE labor and still not be able to turn a profit on anything. The government doesn’t care about executive compensation because its cost effective, they care because if they deserved that salary they wouldn’t need the government’s help in the first place. But bankruptcies and bailouts don’t change the fact that without supervision, a bunch of guys who treat their paychecks like high scores in a video arcade would still be able to set their own pay.
At the end of the day, this executive compensation issue is an affront to both liberal and conservative values.
They are way overpaid. They get into upper management and give themselves gigantic “compensation packages”, then come up with all sorts of bullshit to justify it.Some even start to believe their own line of crap that they spin. Executive pay is way out of line and needs to be curbed.
Haha. My favorite part is the part where no one seems to care and they will be simply allowed to circumvent the system. I mean, the rich stay rich, perhaps even become richer, while thousands of American people are losing their livelihoods – wow, I guess the American dream has truly come to fruition.
God bless America!
Quote yankinwaoz: “ Keep your hands out of my wallet and I’ll keep mine out of yours.”
When your government sets a limit on how much you can earn they do indeed have their hands firmly on your wallet. Last time I checked, my Federal and State governments takes nearly half of my compensation out of my wallet. I’d love it if they would keep their hands out of my wallet-Love It. The executive salary cap is pure class-envy, that’s all it is; if the Feds were serious about controlling salaries and compensation they would cap labor at around $12.50 an hour and demand that all execs within all Federally contracted companies be capped at the same ‘Fair’ $500,000. Fair’s fair right?
Quote windswords: ” While it’s true these companies and execs you mentioned take federal money they are run as successful businesses, so I don’t think it’s a good comparison.”
So…you’re okay with the CEO of Lockheed-Martin making a total compensation package of $26 Million Federal dollars? C’mon, this is Lockheed-Martin whose sole income is government dollars (someone correct me if I’m wrong please) and it’s okay that as a CEO, he is allowed to earn $26 Million of your tax dollars and ALL of their income from our tax dollars, but other companies who receive ‘Federal Money’ have to abide by a $500,000 cap? Fair’s fair, huh? Most government contractors depend solely on our Federal government’s teat and they pay their executives huge salaries-yet you don’t seem to mind. If that teat went away, so would they. Many government contractors would be Tango Uniform within a few months if they had to make products for the general public to buy. Are they successful businesses? Maybe-some do make a great product, but how successful are you when you can charge hundreds of dollars for hammers, toilet seats, coffee makers etc? I think we are all well aware of federal contractor abuses. If the OEMs were run like most Federal contractors, very few people could afford their products because the price would be exhorbatant. We all could be successful too if we ran a federal contractor that was allowed to markup our prices by thousands of percentage points of profit…Can anyone name for me a Federal contractor who you think offers a good value? Please…Besides you’re missing my point in the comparison…If any organization accepts ‘Federal Money’ then that organization should have to abide by the salary cap…or there should be no salary cap at all. It’s really that simple because the law, the constitution and bill of rights should be applied and enforced equally and fairly for all citizens AND businesses operating under United States law.
As for your Fannie/Freddie and AIG comparison, you are right on the money and you are reinforcing my point…there is clear favoritism and clear demonization going on in DC. AIG=Bad, MACs=Good…that ain’t right.
This all getting very ‘Animal Farm’ around here as some creatures are indeed ‘more equal’ than others, eh? Oink oink…
“Last time I checked, my Federal and State governments takes nearly half of my compensation out of my wallet.”
Either your math is off, you’re a multi-millionaire, or the guy who does your taxes really sucks.
Quote AG: “It is now beyond blatantly obvious these men care only about getting paid and care nothing about the success of the business they’re supposedly so good at running they deserve that salary. They have effectively become embezzlers.”
Quote Teddy: “Executive pay is way out of line and needs to be curbed.”
You’re making good points…In a perfect world, I would like to see all pay tied to performance. Moreover, I would like to see American corporations follow something closer to the Japanese model in which from a societal standpoint it is considered poor manners for the top earner within a Japanese corporation to earn anything greater than 10X the mean salary for all workers. That to me, seems ‘fair’ but I would never like to see Federal legislation that caps or controls peoples ability to earn. While I agree that many of our U.S. execs are overpaid, I would still never want to see anyone’s pay suffering at the yoke of a political legislative body. Never.
@Pch101 :
May 14th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Will Fiat be replacing most of the existing executives as soon as they can? It seems reasonable that they would get rid of some of them and replacing them with people they can trust to do things their way.
I think salary caps on existing executives wouldn’t hurt but it might cause problems trying to attract new talent.
The same thing applies to CEO’s. US CEOs of large companies can earn more money, so if a certain US industry or company underpays by a wide margin, it will lose access to a lot of talent.
Corp boards tend to be incestuous, so ceo’s end up positions to approve each other’s pay. It’s a nice little club they have set up.
Also, above a certain level, competence to pay ratio becomes largely irrelevant. I don’t have insight to c-level compensation decisions, but the way middle management one are done are largely political and often terrible, so I can’t imagine it drastically improving higher up the chain.
Will Fiat be replacing most of the existing executives as soon as they can?
I don’t know for sure — they never call, they never write — but it’s a fair guess that whoever takes GM will be replacing a lot of people with their own hires.
In the case of Chrysler, though, there might be some exceptions, given that a lot of these hires are recent (post-Daimler) and do have industry experience. Still, it’s customary for acquiring companies to roll heads, so until we know otherwise, I would assume that it will happen here, too.
Corp boards tend to be incestuous
In this case, the boards are being turned over, so let’s hope that things are different this time.
Stu,
When companies I have worked for asked employees to make sacrifices, the senior management made sacrifices as well. That’s not happening here.
The actions of top management reflect on the company as a whole. These actions shed an especially poor light on the company.
C’mon, this is Lockheed-Martin whose sole income is government dollars
The difference here is that GM and Chrysler are consumer products companies that aren’t supposed to be highly dependent upon government money. There’s really no comparison.
I personally think that the compensation discussion is overblown, in that I am more concerned about the future (hiring competent people who can lead them out) than in the past (whether the bimbos who were employed there under the old regime were overpaid.)
What you apparently don’t understand is that GM and Chrysler suck. As far as businesses go, they really should fail, just as my local burger stand fails after trying unsuccessfully to sell lousy food to the community.
Unfortunately, the timing of the implosion forced us to open our wallets. That doesn’t mean that they deserved it, or that we should be thrilled to pieces about saving them. Those who brought then to their knees should be removed like the disease that they are, and they should be replaced by competent people who know what they are doing.
Frankly, anyone working there in management who thinks that everything was terrific until the bailout came along needs to get canned, yesterday, because those people are the problem, not part of the solution. The Kool Aid drinkers should be sent packing to another water cooler. A lot of vision and hard work will be needed for Version 2.0 of these firms to work.
Many years ago there was a study about compensation. Sorry, I don’t remember where I read this but it made common sense.
What the study found was that if the CEO was paid more than 20 times more than the lowest full time employee the workers didn’t work as hard.
The workers in a Japanese auto company where the CEO earns far less than in a U.S. auto company don’t feel they are working for a pretend God so they work harder.
Workers didn’t mind the original creator or owner getting rich but not a CEO who is basically a janitor. He is suppose to keep the place clean and running smoothly.
I spent a lot of years, maybe too many in the shadow of some of these great executives. It’s a mindset that infects them, once they get to a certain level. The money has gotten to ridiculous levels, they really aren’t that good, and I would even suggest that they hurt far more then most people understand. I watched stupid decision after stupid decision after stupid decision and couldn’t do a thing about it. Out of all my years, I actually worked for ONE, I REPEAT ONE great chief engineer. I only hope that his talent is truly recognized and realized. Sad part, he was over a car program that probably will get canceled… no fault of his, wrong car, wrong market, wrong time.
I was truly against the whole bankruptcy, because of the extended implications, but at this point where MY TAX money is supporting companies only to hand them over to a foreign entity, it’s time to tell the world we’ve had enough. No more tax money. You want a company, pay for it. MY TAX money is not giving you a company for free
in general the range of incomes is bad. Sure, more responsibility talent and education should get you more money. but are they really 100 times more productive than an engineer?
CEOs are still better than the undeserved rich (Paris Hilton and other not-talent clowns).. but c’mon!
As far as I can tell they don’t have any responsibility (at least don’t get hold accountable). It took the president paying the company billions of $ to make Wagoner resign! They really have perfect job security. And when they have to leave, they get millions as golden parachute.
I think the Japanese CEO model is much better (and obviously they could attract someone who knows the business and is successful). At least their CEOs are embarrassed by bad results and resign out of embarrassment when they are not successful and don’t ask for more money.
Compared to the president who has to manage an entire country, fight two wars etc. the CEOs really have it easy at much more salary.
I wish my boss would remove my $ 60,000 cap. I’d take a $ 500,000 cap any day… :-)
It hardly matters.
In the global auto market the people in charge of the most miserably bankrupt automaker are unlikely to be badly wanted by other companies.
Neither the guvn`t nor the carefree chaps at Fiat plan on paying these guys $1 for their efforts. Really.
They are so, so gone. You could set it at $5 or a zillion-billion, it wouldn`t make a diff.
“Class envy” “wealth-envy game” – this is what Marx called “false conciousness”. These people are equivalent to the “welfare queens” that were played up so badly by the right before. Their jobs and livelihood come out of taxes. It’s amazing the snow job some so-called conservatives have perpetrated, actually convincing middle class and poor people to hate those on the bottom (even themselves) while the elites rake in absurd amounts.
From a purely capitalist perspective, Crysler failed and they should be out of a job. From a more populist perspective, they’re government employees now and should make government money. From my perspective, I wonder if these people are even necessary to run a company. Surely there must be a more egalitarian and efficient way to produce cars than the current corporate system – it seems that size is necessary to compete at all (partly due to government regulations that squeeze small companies, and our complex and gamable tax system), but when corporations get large they all seem to get dumb. If we put as much effort into keeping the market fair for smaller corporations (with anti-trust laws and such) as we do subsidizing huge ones, maybe we wouldn’t have this problem.
Basically, the only system in which this sort of BS is defensible is a crony capitalist or corporatist system where the welfare of the elites and national corporations is considered more valuable than that of the average citizen. If you like that – socialize the losses, privatize the profits – well, it’s your conscience.
As for the military-industrial complex and those billions of dollars, I suggest actually watching Eisenhower’s speech and thinking about whether we really needed foreign wars to protect ourselves at home, and whether we really need the biggest and most expensive military on the planet. The speech is painfully relevant even today.
Sorry, I am normally a blind capitalist – let the market decide…but I am for salary caps, and here’s the reason.
These are the people making the rules – and they can’t, have proven they can’t, be trusted to think for what’s best for their countrymen or corporation; only for themselves. Much like Congress, these execs have approved raises and perks and parachutes at the expense of their company and now at the expense of the USA.
They have insulated themselves to where there is no personal risk. If you didn’t have risk, failure being you would lose everything and enter the ranks of the poor, you would not work your ass off – every day, to make your business successful and to do WHAT EVER IT TAKES to feed your family. These over paid overlords have no risk, they have ensured profit from success or failure. One may provide more profit than the other but either way, they win.
I agree with PCH101 that in the future, finding top level execs will be a problem because the US corporate culture expects leadership to make obsene amounts of cash and perks but as long as the Government must be in control of Chrysler, the salary cap should stick. If FIAT wants to provide additional compensation for employees who are dual hatted, fine. Just make sure the money comes from Turin and not Washington.
“Quote windswords: ” While it’s true these companies and execs you mentioned take federal money they are run as successful businesses, so I don’t think it’s a good comparison.”
“So…you’re okay with the CEO of Lockheed-Martin making a total compensation package of $26 Million Federal dollars?”
Yes, as long as the stockholders (that would be you and me potentially) are happy with the companies performance I don’t see a problem. The government doesn’t have a problem either because they feel that Lockheed is delivering a good product or service at a reasonable cost.
Adamatari:
“It’s amazing the snow job some so-called conservatives have perpetrated, actually convincing middle class and poor people to hate those on the bottom (even themselves) while the elites rake in absurd amounts.”
Hogwash. The welfare system was out of whack and the “man on the street” or as Marx would have said “the Proletariat” knew it. The liberal politicians howled how this reform would be the end of civilization as we knew it, dogs and cats living together, etc. And then it passed. And – no starving kids, no riots in the streets, nothing. I guess “those on the bottom (even themselves)” got a job. Hate is not the right word. People don’t like those who abuse the system, whether it’s the person getting welfare undeservedly or medical disability (even after he’s filmed playing tennis), the CEO skirting a restriction on his salary while his company loses money, or a politician getting away with sweetheart real estate deals (I’m looking at you Harry Reid).
Also, think we have a definition problem here. Lockheed et al are Companies that sell products to the US Government. The accept federal money as payment for services rendered. If the BoD of said companies want to pay their CEOs gobs, it is their right and we have no say unless we are stockholders. Then we vote our concience.
In the case of Chrysler (and soon GM), there is a salary cap to protect the American Taxpayer. They are recieving federal money not for services rendered but for charity. They ran their companies into the ground and are expecting the government to step in to save them. As such, they become something like government employees and should be paid as such. I would like to see the GS pay system applied to Chrysler white colars until Chrysler can be removed from the government tit!
@windswords and Kurt:
Many U.S. executives are overpaid, many obscenely so and in a perfect world, I’d like to see U.S. executives have more honor and not take more than 10X the average worker’s pay much like their Japanese counterparts frequently do. However I would never want to see it legislated because once you let politicians determine someone’s pay, they will feel emboldened to determine everyone’s pay and I feel that is counter to the ideals of free enterprise, capitalism and liberty.
Yes, as long as the stockholders (that would be you and me potentially) are happy with the companies performance I don’t see a problem. The government doesn’t have a problem either because they feel that Lockheed is delivering a good product or service at a reasonable cost.
In sweden, when execs are found being paid “excessive” sums in bonuses, they are asked to justify their compensation in public. The vast majority end up rescinding, because they can’t justify the value they deliver.
They aren’t forced to go one way or the other, but it seems at least in the US, the tools who support corporatism do so far more unconditionally than the iconic receivers of its benefits.