Executives Defend Pay Before House Committee

The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing today on CEO Pay and the Mortgage Crisis.  The testimony of the speakers is at the Committee's website, including Countrywide's CEO Angelo Mozilo, former Citigroup CEO Charles Prince, and former Merrill Lynch CEO Stanley O'Neal.  The best exchange, as reported by the Wall St. Journal:

Republican Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia called the hearing a "sanctimonious search for scapegoats." "Punishing individual corporate executives with public floggings like this may be a politically satisfying ritual -- like an island tribe sacrificing a virgin to a grumbling volcano," Mr. Davis said.

Nell Minow, editor of the Corporate Library, responded: "They are not scapegoats and they are certainly not virgins."  WSJ, Top Bank Executives Defend Pay Packages on Capitol Hill.