Nice Work If You Can Get It

My understanding is that even for the super-elite it normally takes a couple of months to wrack up tens of millions of dollars. But Alan Fishman gets the job done with super speed:

But the seizure and the deal with JPMorgan came as a shock to Washington Mutual’s board, which was kept completely in the dark: the company’s new chief executive, Alan H. Fishman, was in midair, flying from New York to Seattle at the time the deal was finally brokered, according to people briefed on the situation. Mr. Fishman, who has been on the job for less than three weeks, is eligible for $11.6 million in cash severance and will get to keep his $7.5 million signing bonus, according to an analysis by James F. Reda and Associates.

One friend suggests “Obama should suspend his campaign to go punch this guy in the kidney.” Indeed.

Part of what you’re seeing as some of this unfolds is that the idea of CEO pay controls specifically tied to the bailout, though good, is also a bit of a joke. A lot of the folks responsible for this mess left their jobs months ago and are current sitting in their multi-million dollar homes, wearing extremely expensive clothing, and laughing at you, me, Obama, McCain and all the rest. Laughing their asses off. You just need to have additional tax brackets for folks up at the millionaire and multi-millionaire level to make sure that the public gets a bigger slice of the pie. If that decreases the incentives for the sort of wild financial shenanigans that brought the country to this point, well, so what?