by Mandatory Marcus

Created on: June 15, 2009   Last Updated: June 23, 2009

Did you know there is an entire market surrounding the nature and structure of executive compensation? Just go to Google.com and do a search for "executive compensation consultants" and enjoy looking at the more than 6 million search results.

I'm going to go ahead and assume that the parties involved in those companies are seasoned, experienced professionals who more than likely have specific industry expertise and understand how to best tie compensation to performance. They probably even have specific industry expertise in areas like manufacturing, IT services, financial services etc.

Which makes me wonder why, with all that expertise out there, our government is putting the task of evaluating executive pay in the hands of the geniuses in Washington, DC.

(I will for the moment ignore the fact that the government has absolutely no business whatsoever in matters of compensation in the private sector...but will undoubtedly get to that another day)

One genius in particular seems to be leading the charge, and that's good ol' Barney Frank, the Congressman from Massachusetts's 4th congressional district; and the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee since 2007.

This of course strikes me as odd because Mr. Frank has absolutely zero experience in doing anything other than being a politician. According to the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress; the only thing Barney Frank has done in his life besides go to school is be in politics.

Nothing wrong with that I suppose. Unless of course you are going to take your utter lack of experience operating in the real world of business and attempt to restructure real world companies in a manner you see fit; based upon all that solid intelligence you receive from...hey who are you receiving your intelligence from?

You have no experience to look back on. You never ran a company. You never started a company. In fact, it doesn't even look like you even worked in a company. You have never had to worry about increasing revenues, cutting costs, employee retention, competitive pressures etc. etc. How can you possibly even consider weighing in on matters about which you know nothing?

Oh I'm sure Mr. Frank would cite all the business leaders he talks to and the conferences he's attended...but really, the only thing he seems to have ever been in regards to business, is an observer.

So by that logic, I should be a coach in the NFL...because I have certainly observed a lot of it.

Since Mr. Frank is so

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