In the latest crackdown, Kenneth Feinberg announced a $500K salary cap on executives at bailed-out firms. Robert Pozen on how the banks can clean house—and get the feds off their backs.

Funding a down payment with the credit increases the odds the buyer will default.

When an insolvent AIG paid out $165 million in executive bonuses, the public was outraged. But that is peanuts compared to the $62 billion AIG has quietly paid out to settle its obligations with some of the world’s largest banks. Last week, the details of this settlement were finally disclosed.

Bob Pozen of Harvard Business School discusses the controversial accounting rules and where we should go from here.

Op-ed by Robert C. Pozen. Congress shouldn’t make the best the enemy of the good. If it avoids the tricky question of damages measurement and adopts these five amendments, it would weed out low-quality patent claims, reduce the number of expensive lawsuits and reward our best innovators.

A critical issue in the Congressional debate on healthcare is whether the new legislation will include a “public option.” Part of the problem is that there is little agreement about what the public option should be. Some see it as having the government act as a provider of last resort. Others mean a national one-payer system based on the Medicare model. Still others mean healthcare cooperatives, though they do not exist in most of the US.

The British and Canadians tend to think not, while Americans don’t seem to mind much. Bob Pozen explores the issue.

When the US pay czar, Kenneth Feinberg, approved the compensation of the top executives at seven troubled financial institutions, he insisted that they all appoint an independent director as the board chair rather than the CEO.

In short, while any tax credit for new jobs is bound to involve some unnecessary government expenditure, a proper design can substantially restrict the ability of employers to game the system. Moreover, the cost of the tax credit can be dramatically reduced to the extent that the new jobs go to workers currently drawing unemployment benefits. It makes more sense to incentivise companies to hire the unemployed than to pay those same people not to work.

Is the U.S. Killing Its Innovation Machine?

If we want corporate America to avoid short-termism, we need to help free portfolio managers and company executives from the tyranny of quarterly results.