President Obama has been hammered all day for Bloomberg’s portrayal of his sentiment about big banker bonuses in a recent interview, and the White House communications team took to the blog to hit back.
White House aides said the headline (“Obama Doesn’t ‘Begrudge’ Bonuses for Blankfein, Dimon”) “made it sound like the President brushed off the impact of bonuses and applauded the role of bankers.”
Reporters asked Obama about two top business executives for JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, and the story quotes Obama as saying: “I know both those guys; they are very savvy businessmen. … I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free-market system.”
Jen Psaki argued the headline on the Bloomberg interview “is not an accurate portrayal of where the President stands or what he said during the interview.”
Psaki, recently promoted to be deputy communications director, provides a transcript of Obama’s remarks:
What did the President actually say during the interview?
“I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That’s part of the free market system. I do think that the compensation packages that we’ve seen over the last decade at least have not matched up always to performance. I think that shareholders oftentimes have not had any significant say in the pay structures for CEOs.”
When asked whether seventeen million dollars is a lot for Main Street to stomach, he expressed shock at the size of the compensation and called for the same actions that are a part of the comprehensive financial reform proposal that has been working its way through Congress:
“Listen, $17 million is an extraordinary amount of money. Of course, there are some baseball players who are making more than that who don’t get to the World Series either. So I’m shocked by that as well. I guess the main principle we want to promote is a simple principle of “say on pay,” that shareholders have a chance to actually scrutinize what CEOs are getting paid. And I think that serves as a restraint and helps align performance with pay. The other thing we do think is the more that pay comes in the form of stock that requires proven performance over a certain period of time as opposed to quarterly earnings is a fairer way of measuring CEOs’ success and ultimately will make the performance of American businesses better.”
Read the full blog here.
