Can we control executive pay?

From Robert Reich

Want to know why you have such little say over corporate executive pay (now over 300 times the pay of typical workers, up from 60 times the typical workers’ pay forty years ago) – even if you own shares of stock through your pension plan, 401-K plan, or mutual funds? Because the managers of your pension plan, your 401-K plan, or your mutual funds – the people who actually vote, and are supposed to represent you -- are in bed with top corporate executives.

Case in point: BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, with $4.6 trillion under management (that’s trillion, not billion). Between July 1, 2014 and June 30, 2015, BlackRock approved 99% of CEO pay packages in the S&P 500.

Not incidentally, BlackRock’s own CEO, Larry Fink, [...] was paid nearly $26 million last year. (Fink has made no secret of his desire to become Treasury Secretary in a Clinton administration. The Obama administration had him on the short list to replace Timothy Geithner, and Fink has filled BlackRock with former officials of the Obama and Clinton Treasury Departments.)

If BlackRock wanted to stop the wild surge in executive pay, it could overnight. But it won’t. Recently it even advised its own shareholders to vote against a shareholder proposal asking it to rethink how it votes on executive pay -- saying such a “rethink” would threaten its independence.

Independence? BlackRock is supposed to represent the interests of millions of small shareholders who are getting screwed by executive pay that's out of control.

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