I have to confess: When I opened this commentary from former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, I expected to be smacked in the face with the words “The fundamentals of the economy are strong,” the phrase that brought down her friend John McCain’s presidential campaign.
Being oblivious is never a good thing.
Instead, what this commentary does is bring forth some common-sense moderation on the admittedly absurd compensation packages CEOs receive. As we’ve seen, too often the CEO is busy driving the company into the ditch with just one hand, because the other’s plunged deep into shareholders’ pockets and employees’ futures.
It’s predictable, frankly, that Americans — and our leaders — are going to react harshly to the unregulated corporate greed that’s so heavily damaged our economy.
But moderation’s never a bad idea, either.
11 Comments
I don’t know how executive compensation can be enforced, quite frankly. Executive (CEO) sets up a consulting firm and contracts for the millions instead of a paycheck. I just see way too many loopholes that cannot be enforced. But it makes a great soundbite!
Why not instead of a mass infringment on business operation we run a test subject for executive compensation with Fannie and Freddie? These are two companies controlled by Government anyway, limit their compensation and in a year or two see if anything has changed for the better. My guess is they can’t do any worse and “real” companies can get back to doing business.
Instead of spending so much time worrying about the pay of the relatively small number of top-end executives in this country, whose companies employ hundreds of thousands of Americans, why don’t we focus on the thousands of athletes, movie stars, and rock singers who do virtually nothing to increase emplyment in this country, and whose paychecks and bonus programs make even the highest-paid executives look like poor step children. It is absolutely disgusting that a basketball player with a 50% free-throw shooting percentage gets paid $20-30 million a year, and all we do is complain that the head of a company that feeds tens of thousands of people makes a few million.
ksdave – you make valid points BUT … why shuold FAILURES like the execs at GM, BofA, Merrill, etc be getting huge paychecks FUNDED BY TAXPAYERS?
bth;
Why should failures like the Kansas City Chiefs or the Kansas City Royals still be paid millions of dollars? The poor fans pay for those failures (in the case of the Royals) year after year after year.
I think the difference is this: Customers of the Chiefs and Royals voluntarily contribute their money to those causes.
There’s nothing voluntary about the payments received by the banking execs who’ve run their operations into the ground.
Absolutely correct bill.
“ksdave
Posted February 18, 2009 at 7:45 pm | Permalink”
My sentiments exactly!
“bwilson
Posted February 20, 2009 at 10:00 am | Permalink
There’s nothing voluntary about the payments received by the banking execs who’ve run their operations into the ground.”
Customers of the banks contribute voluntarily to the profits of those banks by doing business there.
Taxpayers contribute voluntarily to the bailouts of those banks by electing Congresspeople to decide on the voters’ behalf how their tax money will be spent.
b_n – taxpayers do NOT voluntarily give our money to those failures. I don’t think the complaint here is so much compensation to SUCCESSFUL executives; it’s the compensation to the “Welfare Execs”
By allowing any banks (or any businesses) to go on ‘welfare’ the government is undermining the free market system.
Bailing out any business takes away the consumer’s ability to let individual business whose practices they do not support fail.