Popular anger puts fat cat CEOs on the run

Source: AFP via Yahoo

NEW YORK (AFP) - An angry US public and Congress are pushing to snip the rip cord on golden parachutes used by fat cat CEOs to escape Wall Street's mayhem.

Democrats in Congress -- set to resume emergency talks Friday with their Republican counterparts on a 700-billion-dollar (478-billion-euro) bailout for the financial industry -- insisted that any agreed package include restrictions on executive pay.

They caught the mood of a nation sickened at watching the titans of finance walk away from Wall Street disasters not only unscathed, but enriched.

"The wealthiest people, those... in the best position to pay, are being asked for no sacrifice at all," read a petition to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, which by Thursday, after three days, had 32,600 signatures.


Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080926/pl_afp/usfinancebankingpaysociety_080926152607;_ylt=ApiF6Ej_prQliWzaFJF_9M.FOrgF

These CEOs don't need golden parachutes, they need concrete shoes.

Like what has happened in the past to the wealthy elites when they said "let them eat cake"

... and a room at the nearest YMCA. Let them see what the 'little people' experience every day.

but misspelled it - look what came up!! http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls=com.microsoft%3Aen-US&q=CEO+of+Bears-Sterns

DU was #2. Doesn't matter if the poster misspelled it too. What matters is, we've got influence!!

Anyway, my original thought was this: of course, the public is angry after Alan Schwartz walks away from his failed institution, with $161M.

Corporate America was even scared to be seen arriving at the airport in a Limousine it was so bad.

I'm just scared America well be doomed to continue to re-live this cycle of Ratpublican cronyism fleecing the American Tax Payers every 20 yrs or so

:evilgrin:

......How ANY CEO or president of ANY company can get HUGE compensation when the company is losing money or goes out of business? I know how it's done (board of directors) but why after 10 or 20 yrs of this kind of shit it hasn't been stopped. If I fuck up at my job (even with a union) I'm either fired or suspended w/o pay. These motherfuckers can run a company down, collect big pay checks, insurance etc and go right down the block and be hired by another company for another large pay check. FUCK 'EM!!!!!!!

The GOP policy of greed is good and me first is on the verge of destroying our nation. Sick bastards!!!!

The severance package is built into the contract when you take the job. Same as mine is. Its meant to attract a person to a company.

There's far too much collusion between board members and the executive team at most public corporations. Stock options or restricted stock based on share price targets or profit targets are effective. Bonuses and golden parachutes with no metrics are BS and end up screwing over the equity holders. Frankly it borders on fiduciary negligence.

Its like a signing bonus. I'm not arguing that collusion does not exist. Unfortunately, I didn't know anyone on the board of my company :).

Thereby nullifying all severance bonuses.

The de-linking of performance and pay. When top-notch compensation becomes the rule, even for mediocre or bad performance by executives, then we are in trouble. If it's simply automatic that these people have these kinds of contracts, you get a culture of dependency. It's like grade inflation, or keeping up with the Joneses: if executive compensation becomes another form of conspicuous consumption, compensation committees become afraid to pay a reasonable wage.

the shareholders did not make the board accountable in the least. They were fat and happy as long as the stock went up. Similar to the dot.com bubble.

Greed is the prime mover behind this supposed 'disaster'. It is why a system of stringent regulation should be in place. Humans cannot be trusted to "police themselves" in these matters. The entire corporatist political power structure is rotten to its core, from the system of quasi-legal bribery of legislators called "campaign finance" and "lobbying", to deregulation, to the overseas "companies" that allow all of these corporations to launder income and evade taxes.

You seem to believe that the law and the workings of the marketplace should (rightly) constrain even the wealthiest.

I would contend the opposite, that the law and the marketplace serve to maintain their hold on power, and if either legal constraints or economic facts get in the way, the law and the economic rules lose.

The "free market" applies only when it is our jobs being outsourced to a poor country.

why aren't the severance packages being written to penalize them if they fuck up? if they were worth their salt, they wouldn't have a problem with signing such a deal.

why is mediocrity rewarded??? :shrug:

........the form of union representation????? I know how the God Damn thing works, let's fix the whole board of directors good ole boy network to give these ass holes the money (contract) they really deserve. Hey, I have a novel idea, let's let the shareholders have a say in who runs "their" company.

companies out of business. Just ask any CEO. ;-)

like I need a case of poison ivy.

folks are paid very large sums of money just to rubberstamp ideas put forth by the CEO, and sometimes just to have their "very important names" on the Board.

Some of these folks could be called professional board members because they serve on multiple boards around the country, and in some cases, around the world.

These members of the Board are also part of the social elite/business elite structure that is international in scope, and HIGHLY REGARDED because they are very important people.

So, these board members are willing to give these CEO's huge salaries and compensation packages/severance packages because the board members also get "perks" such as hobnobbing with the other rich and famous, insider tips on lucrative business and stock options, and appointments to even more lucrative board member jobs.

Never mind that the Board of Directors is charged with looking out for the best interests of the corporation and the stockholders.

It's just another insider game to make the rich and powerful more rich and powerful. And it works.

Like when the CEO of company "A" happens to be on the board of company "B" -- where the CEO of company "B" is also on the board of company "A". One big-ass daisy-chain.

I'm sure there are people out there whose only function in life is to sit on boards of directors. Nice job, if you can stomach kissing that much ass.

The general public lives constantly under the shadow of the corporate state's wrath - whether layoff, firing, arrest and detention for opposing the state, scolding for bankruptcy, lecturing when applying for food stamps, plus the daily examples of those living on the street in cardboard boxes.

Union organizers in third world countries supported by the U.S. corporate state face the very real prospect of arrest and detention, torture, and disappearance.

Perhaps if the rich had to live with the spectre of the guillotine and the shadow of Ekaterinberg, it would "concentrate their minds wonderfully" and make them more responsible.


:mad:

French Revolution Severance Package

.....just watch this type of shit drop like a fucking rock.

It was never fair for CEO's to make so much more (100 times, 200 times, 300+times) than the average employee and I'm glad this inequity is being discussed.

they have enough to put back into the company to help bail it out

spare, but rather insufficient to properly get by on. The country will have to be rebuilt some time; infrastructure, social and material, the lot. Synergies my friends must be facilitated.

over the years should be sequestrated. As well as those of the members of the committees sanctioning such levels of compensation.

by the way, i am not encouraging violence against anyone for any reason.

i'm just saying i'm surprised that, given the fleecing of regular folks some CEOs have caused, someone hasn't at the very least found them and given one a good ass-whupping and at the very worst, shot one. granted, it wouldn't solve anything and wouldn't bring back anyone's money. all i'm saying is i'm surprised it hasn't happened.

the one that surprised me the most was kenny boy lay. i mean, a lot of people lost their life savings. a lot of texans lost their life savings. and those people are not known for taking things like that lying down. yet he managed to move about freely in society until he dropped over dead. nobody spat on him in a restaurant. no one slapped him around in an elevator. no one threw rocks through the windows of his home(s). and, truthfully, that surprised me.

if i had owned stock in WaMu, my first thought would be to go gunning for the sons of bitches who ruined it. i wouldn't, but that would be my first thought. perhaps the CEO class knows that people don't do that sort of thing anymore. perhaps they're well-protected. i suspect if a crazed investor even slapped the face of a bank CEO, that investor would be put away for many years. the upper classes don't take too kindly to affronts from hoi polloi.

I suspect the average multi-million-earning CEO's bodyguards could go toe-to-toe in a direct confrontation with anything/anyone short of a SWAT team.

Your average full-auto-capable weapon + licensing costs something like $10K, but that's a drop in the bucket to these guys.

A CEO got whacked by a mob of very unhappy employees. Saw the piece here a few days ago.

DODD NEEDS TO MAKE IT CLEAR THAT THE DEMOCRATS WILL NOT PASS ANYTHING WITH OUT CAP ON CEO PAY. The people who cased the problem in the first place should not benefit

bailout money, until every dime plus interest is repaid to the Treasury. The ONLY other compensation allowed would be shares in the company they run. Companies do well, they do well. Company flops, why shouldn't the bastard running it be ruined?

Any system that allows payment for failure is at moral hazard. If failure pays, why succeed?

As far as I'm concerned, no bailout at all. Bad businesses should fail, and competent people will pick up the scrap and make something of it. But if we have to have welfare for giant corporations, $1 a year for CEOs and not a dime more until it is all paid back at a nice rate of return, say 20% per year, for the taxpayers.

After all, this is a junk investment, and 20% is a whole lot less than credit card rates!

And now they are seeing the American people beginning to fight back more aggressively than any time recently.

All CEO's a link to the CEO taken out by angry employees in India.

then the country can put the two-legged corporate fat cats on a financial diet.

No to golden parachutes for corporate fat cats while the skinny kittens on Main Street are getting golden showers.