White House seeks to rein in executive pay excesses

President Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner while speaking about executive compensation in the White House, February 4, 2009.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A top economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden said on Tuesday the Obama administration has to sort out some rules on executive pay limits, but is determined to address the issue.

"The important thematic here is that this president, this vice president, are absolutely aware of the excesses in executive compensation and the Congress is too, and we will wrestle that to the ground," Jared Bernstein said in an interview with Reuters Television.

Bernstein noted that there were rules on executive pay set out in both the revamped financial stability program that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner unveiled a week ago and in the $787 billion economic stimulus bill being signed into law by President Barack Obama on Tuesday.

"We have to figure out how to square those two," he said.

Bernstein said he thought between three and four million U.S. jobs could be "saved or created" as a result of the economic stimulus program. At a minimum, the pace of job losses in recent months should be slowed, he added.

He also said it was vital to bring stability back into the banking system and to get credit flowing again in order to revive the economy, in recession since December 2007.

"You have to have an amply functioning banking and credit system and I think, arguably, we don't have that right now," Bernstein said. He added that "we have to do what it takes" to get credit markets operating once more.

Many analysts say the government's activities in pumping massive amounts of capital into banks and setting rules for executive pay for those receiving funds represents the greatest intrusion of government into the private sector in decades.

(Reporting by Glenn Somerville; Editing by Dan Grebler)