Parsing The Responses To New Executive Pay Rules

Citigroup says:

"We have received the decision from the Special Master for the 2009 compensation plan for our senior executive officers and certain of our most highly compensated employees. We are pleased this decision has been issued and we will now work to comply with the plan's requirements."

Yes sir. Right away sir. How high do you want us to jump?

Wells Fargo says:

"Wells Fargo has a pay-for-performance culture. Where team members are compensated based on their individual and business performance, but beyond this it's premature to comment on the federal reserve's proposal until its finalized."

Well, since it's a propooosal, we're going to pretend that we have leverage, which is actually a way of our saying that the federal government has no business telling us what to do here. We cannot grow our way out of our, eh, situation, unless we are to compensate our employees based on our internal definition of performance.

GM says:

Following a collaborative and constructive review of GM's executive compensation, GM is adopting the changes to its executive compensation as outlined by the special master.  

Ok, I... oh, there's more.

GM is more heavily weighting total compensation to non-cash compensation that is directly tied to the company's performance, consistent with GM's long-standing compensation philosophy. Along with restoring GM to profitability, a key priority is responsible stewardship of the public investment in our company and rapid repayment of that investment.  As GM continues to redefine its business, we are focused on delivering value to our customers and stockholders, and our senior leadership will ultimately be compensated based on our success in doing so.

When we cut the ranks of our middle management, we apparently forgot to cut the position of the person whose job it is to take short crisp sentences that deal with the obvious and turn them into long, corporate-speak paragraphs that separate word from meaning.