The Other Value of Life

KENNETH FEINBERG IS a private lawyer best known for administering the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund and the Gulf Coast Claims Facility in the wake of the Deep Horizon oil spill. Feinberg also doled out money on behalf of chemical companies in the 1984 settlement of the Agent Orange litigation, and he distributed philanthropic donations to victims of the massacre at Virginia Tech in 2007. In a different vein, the Treasury Department appointed Feinberg to limit compensation for top executives of companies that received TARP funds—a role that earned him the popular if misleading moniker of “pay czar.” While the September 11 job gave Feinberg the godlike power to adjudicate the value of human life, the TARP job gave him the even more daunting task of telling bankers that they could not earn $20 million a year. Why should this man have been given these powers?