Go figure

Yesterday, Brad DeLong raised an interesting question:

I wound up being quite unhappy with my "fear of finance" piece, because it completely ducked one of the most important questions: why the extraordinarily outsized pay packets of the high financiers? Why doesn't competition--which sorta works elsewhere in the economy--cause us to see greatly reduced earnings? We understand, we think, why celebrities get paid so much--a combination of increasing returns in distribution, being the genuinely best in the world, and being well-known for your well-known-ness. But why financiers?

What is it that blocks effective entry and competition, exactly?

But, I have a related question after reading this news:

AUBURN HILLS, Mich., Aug. 6 — When Robert L. Nardelli was sent packing from Home Depot in January with a $210 million exit package and a reputation as an imperious chief executive who had made strategic blunders, he seemed tarnished forever.

But that’s not the way some big investors see him. To them, he is a former operations whiz at General Electric who can bring new managerial discipline to Chrysler, and make the struggling Detroit automaker hum again.

And so, in being named chief executive Monday at Chrysler by its new owners — the private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management — Mr. Nardelli, 59, is being given the chance to try to bring off two comebacks: Chrysler’s, and his own.

Why is it that no matter how many corporate turn-arounds they fail at, the same people get picked again and again to lead the next corporate turn-around? And, you'll note, it's the very people Brad DeLong asks about who are the ones that pick these guys.