Pay czar: Saying "no" to task wasn't an option

NEW YORK (Reuters) - It's not easy saying "no," at least not to a request from the U.S. Treasury Secretary.

That's how Washington lawyer, mediator and academic Kenneth Feinberg explains his decision to agree to take on the weighty task of deciding how much executives at some of America's biggest companies should make.

"Has anybody thought about saying no to the secretary of the Treasury?" Feinberg said at the Reuters Global Finance Summit in New York, when asked why he became the Obama administration's pay czar for no pay. "This is an important assignment."

The Brockton, Massachusetts-born Feinberg took the job in June, putting himself squarely in the crosshairs of what many consider an untenable and politicized debate over executive compensation.

Needless to say, the U.S. Treasury was not overwhelmed with applicants for the post. But for Feinberg, 64, turning down Timothy Geithner was not an option.

As pay czar, Feinberg rules on pay at seven major companies -- including American International Group Inc (AIG.N), Bank of America Corp (BAC.N) and Citigroup Inc (C.N) -- that took extraordinary taxpayer bailouts.

He also seems uncowed by the high stakes nature of his mandate, which lately has seen him blamed for Bank of America's struggles to recruit a new CEO as well as the threatened departure of AIG's chief executive.

The job has been a balancing act that has made Feinberg the butt of criticism and applause, sometimes simultaneously.

"I find that if I continue to be criticized by both the populists, by Main Street and Wall Street, I like to think maybe I have struck the right balance," Feinberg said.

POLITICS?

Feinberg talks like the lawyer he is, often going on at length about the importance of interpreting the proper statute rather than the ultimate wisdom or ethics involved.

Feinberg said the politics of pay was inherent in the enactment of the law creating his post and he is merely "administering a statute."

"I don't even try and wade into that battle," Feinberg said.

Feinberg says his current assignment is a walk in the park in comparison to handling the September 11 victim's fund, where as special master he doled out hundreds of millions of dollars to victims of attacks.

"The 9/11 fund involved 3,000 families that had lost a loved one at the World Trade Center, in the airplanes, or the Pentagon -- 2,200 people disfigured, burned, maimed, respiratory illness," Feinberg said. "The human dimension in the design and implementation of the 9/11 fund was different in degree, different in kind. This is nothing like that."

(Reporting by Steve Eder and Karey Wutkowski; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)