World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

“With executive pay a controversial issue at Barclays and Citigroup, the Lehman documents, which emerged in connection with the company’s bankruptcy proceedings, show that today’s controversial awards would have looked miserly in the boom years before the financial crisis.

Robert Millard, a 32-year veteran of the broker-dealer, who ran the “global trading strategies”, was due to make $51.3m in 2007, according to a list of the 50 most highly paid employees, which he topped.

That puts into the shade the $40m package of Dick Fuld, Lehman’s chief executive, and is far more than the $15m paid last year to Vikram Pandit, Citi’s chief executive, or the £25m for Bob Diamond at Barclays, both of which sparked shareholder revolts this month.

The Lehman documents, obtained by the Financial Times and first reported by the Los Angeles Times, show the top equity analysts – traditionally less well paid than investment bankers or traders – made as much as $4m each at Lehman.

While pay of top executives is disclosed in regulatory filings, the Lehman lists are a reminder that top employees below the senior management level can surpass the pay of their bosses and escape shareholder scrutiny.”

We get this news on the same day that it was reported that nearly one Spaniard in four is unemployed.

Blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng has escaped house arrest and issued a dramatic video calling upon the Chinese leadership to root out corruption.  It is hard to assess the impact of this video since it is hard to know how many Chinese citizens will see the video.  But the timing is designed to put pressure on the US-Chinese talks on human rights scheduled for this week.  It is rumored that Chen is in the US Embassy–clearly an awkward situation for the US.

Another European government falls because of austerity policies.  The Romanian government bites the dust.