Now, before we start, I would like to remind the reader that the above articles - and I use the term loosely - did not appear in some propaganda leaflet or cheerleading bizniz newspaper. It's the Herald Tribune. It's supposed to be a reasonably sane and serious newspaper, not a branch of Minitrue. There went another one of my cherished illusions. Ah well, c'est la vie.

The first article, Dutch move to limit big payouts for chief executives starts out with a heartwarming story of an active and engaged CEO who brought home samples of his company's product to do amateur quality control. It then goes on to relating how the same CEO was asked some rather pointed questions when he started cashing bonuses with around eight or nine digits.

At the risk of stating the obvious, I would point out that the newsie is insinuating that all CEOs are conscientious, hard-working and diligent people who have the best interest of their company in mind, who have certainly earned even their princely salaries and who are being unfairly persecuted by envious populists. If you believe any of that, I have some subprime mortgage bonds I'd like to sell. And this happens right off the bat, as the very first thing in the article.

Then there is this sterling quote from the finance minister of the Netherlands - the guy who is pushing the law mentioned in the title:

"Public support for entrepreneurship around the globe is eroded if you let this continue, and this is not in the interests of our economy or entrepreneurship."

Notice how the priority here is not redressing injustice or maintaining an equitable social contract. No, the issue is making sure that public support for "entrepreneurship" is not eroded by the kind of headlines that you get when you cash in eight-digit severance payments. Presumably this radically activist finance minister wouldn't mind eight-digit severance payments if only he could be spared the uncomfortable headlines they tend to generate...

Then there is a laundry list of measures debated or taken by various European politicians and governments, before we come to this gem:

But the debate is most advanced in the Netherlands, where Dutch notions of social equality have come into violent collision with the country's tradition of enterprise and trade.

Notice the slight of hand here: "Social equality" is described as being at odds with a "tradition of enterprise and trade." Oh, and the "tradition of enterprise and trade" is implicitly associated with eight-figure severance packages. Without justification, argument or even explanation. That's a pretty neat trick. Utterly dishonest, of course, but a pretty neat trick none the less.

Hot on its heels we get this one:

"Because of the amount of money, not only people in the street but people in the boardrooms were asking questions," Xander van Uffelen, the economics editor of de Volkskrant newspaper and author of a new book on executive pay, said of the Numico payout.

Am I the only one here who gets the impression that the newsie gives more weight to the opinions of the "people in the boardrooms" than the "people in the streets"?

And then the poor, persecuted millionaire is milked for a bit more propaganda value human interest angle:

"Only in the Netherlands am I the man with 80 million," said Bennink. "In the rest of the world I get compliments on the job I have done."

Then another couple of choice paragraphs:

By international standards Dutch executives do not appear to be overpaid. Otten says executive salaries and cash bonuses in the Netherlands are about 25 percent of U.S. levels and half of those in Britain. The gap would be "significantly greater" if more data on options and shares were available, he added.

[...]

Van Uffelen, whose newspaper has done regular surveys of remuneration among top Dutch executives, dates big increases to the 1990s. It was, he says, a decade in which several Dutch companies acquired foreign companies and business leaders discovered that they were earning less than their new juniors.

Of course the appropriate metric for CEO remuneration is the income of international peers (and peers is precisely the right word...). Heaven forbid that CEO wages be based on such profane metrics as the value of their work. And it goes without saying that international means Anglo-American.

One of the paragraphs in the ellipsis above is this one:

In fact, were the law already in force, it would have had only a marginal impact on Bennink or Groenink. Their big money came not from a severance deal but from stocks and options.

So even if the envious socialists pass their populist law, executives can still receive their princely salaries - nyah, nyah, nyah! - because the corporate accountants are so much smarter than the government's ditto. We're so used to seeing this kind of concern trolling that I suspect most people don't really take time to think about it - I know I usually don't. But it's actually a quite brazen show of contempt for the democratic process. They're effectively saying "well, we're so big that we can make the law - or at least find ways around it."

(Of course, even if they assumed pious faces and made noises about respecting the tender feelings of the populace, they would probably still be horse thieves. But at least they wouldn't be publicly gloating about all the horses they steal...)

On page two, there is another sob story about a poor persecuted (millionaire) executive:

"The way it played out, the details of my pay emerged to coincide with a large reorganization of the company in which many people lost their jobs," Scheepbouwer said in his office at the company headquarters in The Hague. "The press had a field day. I was portrayed as the ultimate egomaniac manager or fat cat."

With public pressure raining down he decided it would best to forgo the bonus.

"You don't want to take the company through an awful lot of hassle because of a million euros," he said. "You don't have a holiday less because you don't get a bonus. What is more galling is that you are semi-blackmailed into it." [My emphasis]

Funny how he just happened to be cashing in a bonus at the same time that his company was firing "many people" restoring its competitiveness. Purely coincidentally, you know. One of those things that just happens to happen from time to time. But of course the simple-minded peasants couldn't understand that and started getting uppity. So the generous and self-sacrificing CEO gave in to the public's blackmail (sic) - purely for the good of the company, you understand.

As an aside, it is interesting to note that he freely admits that he doesn't actually need the money - or even knew what he was going to spend it on. I could understand - not sympathise, but understand - that someone would be pissed about missing out on a million more or less unearned euro if he had planned to use the money to pay out his house, or invest in this startup company that he believed in despite everyone else thinking it was bunk, or whatever people do with that much money. But being pissed about money for their own sake?

And then, of course, the article closes with the mandatory, almost ritual, invocation of the King of Clubs (in the shape of Globalisation and the big, bad Chinese bogeyman):

Such criticism resonates in the Netherlands despite its trading history, he said, because of uncertainties among workers in a globalized world.

(And again the axiomatic equation of princely CEO wages with trade and entrepreneurship. Just for good measure.)

Scheepbouwer argues that the Dutch government now, with its proposed limits, is encouraging a climate that penalizes entrepreneurs.

"For really talented and really exceptional performers this is not a very attractive place," he said. "It is not accepted that people are outside the normal. The only people that are accepted outside the normal are musicians or football players."

Classic King of Clubs. Right out of the textbook. A tobacco industry lobbyist couldn't have said it better.

He said he had advised his own children to seek job opportunities outside the Netherlands. "If there is an opportunity in a more interesting place, they should do that," he said.

Because patriotism is, obviously, only for the peons.

Alright, that's the first article. The second will have to be deconstructed in a new diary or in the comment thread, because I am going to bed now.

- Jake