Remember those compensation limits?

Everybody remembers how the executives at major banks and investment houses were going to be limited in their compensation, right? So they couldn't take home big buckets of money for tanking a company, and then leave with the golden parachute to cash in on their way out? Failing upwards, so to speak. Remember how that was a major part of the bill?

Well, it still is. Kind of. In what amounts to a final middle-finger from the Bush administration (well, OK, with the current pace of things, "final" remains to be seen), those rules only apply to companies that receive bail-out funds by selling assets to the government by auction. This was originally the system the Treasury Department said they planned to use to distribute the money, and why the provision was written that way. Of course, now that the law has been passed, the Treasury Department isn't using that system, and has said there are no plans to use it in the future. So all those limits don't actually apply to any real companies. Handy, that.

Here's the Washington Post story on it.