CEO pay may not remain a problem for much longer. As China gets its industry on par with ours, it will soon grow a crop of CEO’s as sharp as ours. Some day, one company will get a Chinese CEO on an H1 visa for a pay that will be very low by U.S. standards, yet very high by Chinese standards. And the trend can only snowball from there on…

Love,

Major change in accounting proposed for CEO (embezzlement) salaries. Mo more accounting as corporate expense proposed!
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America’s Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chiefs are close to deciding that salary and perks exceeding five million dollars annually can not rationally be deemed pay for work expended. Payouts of five million to hundreds of millions would quite boggle the minds of both Adam Smith and Karl Marx, said one insider, “off, off, off the record.”
Going forward, the recommendation will be that executive remuneration exceeding five mil annually will be construed as a disbursement of corporate capital. Henceforth these deductions from a company’s capital account must be subject to a public vote and agreed to per amounts by boards, directors, trustees and not so trust-ees as the case may be.
The new accounting Pronouncement will reflect that mega salaries in excess of the maximum five mil will be considered as an allocation of corporate capital which will no longer qualify for accounting treatment as a corporate expense.
A number of CEO’s have formed a study committee particularly in response to the IRS position of “You can call it capital or you can call it Swiss cheese, we’re still taxing exec’ pay at the highest personal rate possible.”
“There’s a fundamental lack of fairness here,” whinged the corporate CEO’s.
They, the potentially afflicted CEOs, vociferously pointed out that, “This change is counterintuitive. Even embezzlement is treated as a deductible expense.”
Shareholders, mostly wearing Abu Ghraib style hooding to protect their identities, were cautiously pessimistic.
--cognitorex blogspot--

I have no problem with a Bill Gates type who invents something that people really want and are willing to buy raking in billions.
I do have a problem with a CEO who is basically a caretaker, adding nothing to the net worth of the company (other than by manipulating the books) making that kind of money.
Finally, JCPenny shareholder’s said enough is too much and won the right to approve exec pay, bonuses and severance packages.
When are the other shareholder’s going to wake up? Can’t they see that their dividends would be greater were it not for these pay packages? Or are they all lock step Republican’s and blind to reality?
And the severance packages really took the cake.
A person who failed to do the job is fired and then rakes in millions? That goes beyond obscene.

OTHER COUNTRIES DON’T HAVE TO INVADE THE U.S.-ALL THEY HAVE TO DO IS SEND US CONTAMINATED ITEMS THAT POISON US IN OUR HOMES.LET’S LAY THIS ON BUSH*Ts DOORSTEP.HE SHOULD BE CONVICTED OF “CRIMINAL RECKLESS ENDANGERMENT” IF THERE IS SUCH A CHARGE.AFTER ALL......HE ENGINEERED THIS B*****T WITH THESE COUNTRIES.NOW OUR KIDS ARE SUFFERING WHILE HIS “BUSH BUNCH” CRONIES GET TAX BREAKS AND BONUS BUCKS.

Here’s a balm for ya.  When you get pissed about CEO’S, their companies, and the perks, not to mention the US gov. rocketing to bail them out of their financial miseries they themselves bring on in one way or another, think about the poor, and I do mean poor, bastards in NO who after two years have yet to hear from good ole’ Uncle Sam and that you could have been one of them.  Doesn’t this country make you sick and elated at the same time?  There’s no way the Boys of 1789 could have scripted stuff like this.  If this is what living in a free society is, then I think I’d consider trying something different.

The market is NOT a free one.  CEOs have their friends placed on the corporate boards and the compensation committees.  And the owners (the shareholders) are not allowed a vote on the compensation of the CEOs.  The system is rigged.

If you look at the “gay” nineties and the “roaring” twenties, it seems like Deja Vu. It took a “Great Depression” to reshape political and economic thought in this country and I’m afraid that’s what it’s going to take again. Even the foibles of Paris Hilton can be found in the past what with the Fatty Arbuckle and Stanford White cases. Unfortunately, the Plutocracy never goes broke in these crashes and in fact gets even richer by snapping up all the bargains that the nouveau riche have to dump for cash. The very same nouveau riche that are the most concerned with socialism/communism and who will be the big losers in any future economic upheaval. As long as the Soviet Bear was on the prowl, the plutocrats were sufficiently scared enough to keep their rapacity at bay. Come on China. Come on Putin. Maybe it’s dirty skivvies from fear that brings the “aristos” into a more reasonable point of view instead of phony Social Darwinism.

#97673
You hit on the buzz words, communism/socialism.  It’s amazing how those words continue to strike fear in the very hearts of so many Americans. A CEO’s vulgar rate of pay is merely proof that we haven’t been taken over by communists - what a relief.

Of course, on close inspection what we find in America is a dual economic system - capitalism for the poor and socialism for the rich.

http://www.tarpley.net/29crash.htm

For a fun read.

This so-called free-mkt madness has only reamed the average taxpayer, especially with the dawn of Reaganomics (Voodoo Economics) according to Bush sr.
Too few of us remember the thievery and the fraud of the S&L;crisis under Reagan and it is repeating itself with the subprime fiasco mentioned.
Like they say if you forget history, you’re doomed to repeat it. Propaganda has since convinced Americans that the rich earn what they get.
Look at some of the facts below:

The S&L;crisis of the 1980s was a wave of American savings and loan association failures involving over 1,000 savings and loan institutions. It was the largest and costliest venture in public fraud, insider abuse, and just plain larceny of all time.

The ultimate cost is estimated to be over $150 billion, about $125 billion paid for by the U. S. taxpayers (Wikipedia). It constituted a large portion of the budget deficits of the early 1990s, and probably contributed to the 1990-91 economic recession.

This trend won’t change until Americans demand action from our leaders and when we stop supporting wall street with our investment dollars.  Now that would get their attention!  How quick would the CEO at Mattel, and WallStreet, react if Americans don’t buy those chinese mfg toys this Christmas…

And the disparity of the groveling congress that suck-up to these CEO’s becomes even more appalling.
Benito’s idea of government has come full-force in Amerika. We now are The Fascist Republic of Amerika. Where votes are measured in dollars with a payback of about 10% to politicians and 90% to the corporations that have taken America as hostage. Check out Ted Stevens for every dollar he flim flams he returns 20 or more dollar to his masters. And these crooked politicians even have support from their constituents. Nothing like being led to the slaughter house with a happy face.