Greed is Good?

Is it greed that truly makes American Industry successful? I was watching an interview discussing how Barack Obama could cause long-term harm on Wall Street by limiting the salaries of firms that take Federal aid to $500,000. The pundit said you won't get the best people by limiting salaries. That's socialism!

Somehow it's just good capitalism when the government bails out inept firms run by greedy (greed is good remember?) executives. Maybe its possible that the greed caused the problems in the first place. Is any individual worth $14 million a year or $200 million a year in the case of Wall Street executives? If you only offered $500,000 would you be excluding the best people to run the company?

Does it truly take millions of dollars to attract the best leaders? If we follow that logic then we have to believe that our President ($400,000 per year) and General Patraeus ($216,000 per year) are flawed as leaders. We know this isn't the case. Perhaps lower salaries will attract the right kind of leaders for our nation's companies.