Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass, said he will hold hearings next week on executive pay handed out by the financial industry, in particular what he calls “outsized forms of compensation.”
“The question of compensation for people in the financial industry is a legitimate cause of concern in the country as a whole, and we are going to address it,” Frank told reporters on Tuesday.
Frank said he is not concerned that the industry, which received a $700 billion bailout in 2008, has threatened that government restrictions would slow down the business or send top performers looking for other work where they can make more money.
“We’re told, well, if you do these restrictions, you may get less of this activity,” Frank said. “That’s not a bad thing, necessarily.”
As for the highly paid employees whose salaries could be reduced by federal regulation, Frank doubts they’ll flee the industry.
“There may be, in some of these financial institutions, people capable of playing major league baseball but I’m not aware of any,” Frank said. “But absent that, I don’t know where they would go to get comparable forms of compensation. Perhaps they could star in major motion pictures. But I don’t know what else they could do.”
