According to the New York Times, the Obama Administration is going to require banks and corporations that receieved federal bailout money to clear any changes in its pay for top management with Kenneth Feinberg--the administration's new "pay czar."  

The proposal is part of a broad set of regulations on executive compensation expected to be announced by the administration as early as this week. Some of the rules are required by legislation enacted in the wake of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, and they would apply only to companies that received taxpayer money.

Others, which are being described as broad principles, would set standards that the government would like the entire financial industry to observe as banks and other companies compensate their highest-paid executives, though it is not clear how stringent regulators will make them.

This is not the first time the federal government has tried to regulate executive pay.  Joann Lublin, management news editor for the Wall Street Journal, recounts some past efforts, and says "the record is not a very good one":