I’ve hit this theme before, but I hap­pily yield the floor to Matt Browner Hamlin, who bops Joe Nocera for a dumb para­graph in his column on exec­u­tive pay cuts today:

The hypocrisy of how the con­tracts of Wall Street exec­u­tives are being treated versus those of union work­ers is simply stun­ning. All I want to see in an eco­nomic crisis is fair­ness. If con­tracts are invi­o­lable, they are invi­o­lable for every­one, regard­less of whether they are between blue collar work­ers in fac­to­ries, white collar work­ers in office com­plexes, or the multi-​millionaire exec­u­tives on Wall Street. If the eco­nomic crisis demands that auto work­ers take a hair­cut on their pay, ben­e­fits, and pen­sions, Wall Street exec­u­tives must be held to the same stan­dard. Con­versely, if the con­tracts between big banks and invest­ment firms and their top exec­u­tives simply cannot be changed, then it’s time to go back and honor the con­tracts between the auto indus­try and orga­nized labor.

(To be fair, the sanc­tity of AIG’s bonus con­tracts really isn’t Nocera’s sub­ject. He argues that Ken­neth Fein­berg, the so-​called pay czar, can only pre­scribe cos­metic limits to Wall Street’s com­pen­sa­tion mania, which is true. But still.)