Atlas Shrugs

And so it begins (from Bloomberg):

John Mack and Kenneth Lewis, the chief executive officers of Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Corp., said pay limits tied to federal rescue funds have prompted some top employees to leave the companies.

“I had a hedge fund say to me, ‘I can hire anyone I want from you and Goldman,’” Mack said at the bank’s annual meeting today in Purchase, New York, referring to rival Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Some units lost a dozen people, he said, without identifying them. Lewis, speaking at his annual shareholder gathering in Charlotte, North Carolina, also blamed the restrictions for departures.

“We have lost strong revenue generators over the past three months to competitors that are not facing the same compensation restrictions that we are,” Lewis said.

We might be witnessing history in slow motion. Take note as the statist policies embraced by the cadre in Washington drive the US economy into the sludge of stagnation and European-like mediocrity.