By Jim Neal : Jan 30, 2008

heraldsun.com 

Guest columnist — I read that Angelo Mozilo, CEO of failed mortgage giant Countrywide Financial, is “giving back” $37 million of the severance package he negotiated for himself.

He’d like us to overlook that fact that he will still walk away from Countrywide with more than $40 million — and that’s on top of $387 million he earned while driving that company into the ground.

So much for personal responsibility. So much for responsible governance by corporate directors.

It’s not right that a CEO so entwined with the mortgage crisis rocking world financial markets gets a huge payoff while the rest of us have to live with — and clean up — the mess.

President Bush, his economic advisors and financial chiefs around the world, say we need to restore confidence in the banking system and the economy.

Well, I tell you, it would go a long way to restore my confidence in the system to know Mozilo will be held responsible for the wreckage at Countrywide.

For decades, hard-working Americans have been asked to sacrifice their pay raises, pensions and even their jobs to “make companies more efficient in a global economy.” They made these sacrifices even as they met or exceeded all the goals management set.

Meanwhile, corporate CEOs enrich themselves even when they destroy American companies and jobs. Our free enterprise system doesn’t reward folks on Main Street for failing, and it shouldn’t reward CEOs on Wall Street who fail either.

To restore accountability as well as confidence, the directors of Bank of America, slated to acquire Countrywide, should freeze Mozilo’s entire pay package. He really ought to return the third of a billion he earned while he was destabilizing the world economy.

I would expect that corporate leaders had learned a lesson from the ruin left in the wake of renegade corporations like Enron and WorldCom. Employees left with worthless pension accounts and no job sure did.

Countrywide and the broader credit crisis show that folks on Main Street do best when someone is watching out for them in Washington and not on Wall Street. That’s what our government is supposed to do. Senator Dole, are you listening?

But too often, politicians protect big campaign contributors rather than regular citizens. It’s time Washington and Wall Street got the message: start doing what’s best for all Americans.

And let’s remember the conservative principles of personal responsibility apply to the fellows at the top of the heap as well as those on the bottom.

Jim Neal, candidate for U.S. Senate, worked as an investment banker at Salomon Brothers on Wall Street, and now lives in Orange County. His campaign headquarters is in Durham.