On Mar 8, 9:57*am, "Tom Gardner" wrote:
"Wes" wrote in message

...





"Tom Gardner" wrote:

Like you said: *"A CEO EARNS more...." *The key word here is "earns"!!! *I
want
to see where you got your figures, I"m missing the other 820 parts of my pay.

Well, first you need to be publicly traded, have a compensation committee,
get a golden parachute deal, ect.

I believe you own your company and you are entitled to everything you can
get out of it. *Not that I want to ever agree with Ron but some of these
CEO's that make out no mater how bad their companies do is just wrong. There
should be a penalty for failure. *Front office or out in the plant.

Wes

You are certainly right! *We read about the one in 100,000 companies that have
the huge compensation packages while most firms' officers make a reasonable
salary and work their asses off.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Care to tell us about some of the "good guys"?

Meanwhile your children's future is being raped by the likes of these
guys....

And make no mistake, your kids are going to have to pay for this
one....

TMT

Congressional panel rips subprime CEOs' lavish pay By Kevin Drawbaugh
Fri Mar 7, 6:11 PM ET



The fat compensation packages of three U.S. CEOs whose companies are
being hammered by the widening mortgage crisis came under harsh
criticism on Friday at a congressional hearing on executive pay.

In the last two quarters of 2007 alone, the three executives' firms
lost more than $20 billion on investments in subprime and other risky
mortgages, said the House of Representatives Oversight and Government
Operations Committee.

Yet the three took home fortunes in 2007 -- $120 million for
Countrywide Financial Corp (CFC.N) CEO Angelo Mozilo; a $161 million
retirement package for ex-Merrill Lynch (MER.N) CEO Stanley O'Neal;
and $39.5 million in stock, options, bonus and perks for former
Citigroup (C.N) CEO Charles Prince.

"The mortgage crisis is having enormous repercussions. Families are
losing their homes ... Thousands are losing their jobs. It seems like
everybody is hurting, except for the CEOs who had the most
responsibility," said California Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman,
committee chairman.

In a hearing room packed with bank lobbyists and lawyers, Waxman said,
"I have no problem with paying for success. But it looks like when
you're a CEO you get paid for failure."

Mozilo, O'Neal and Prince told Waxman's panel that they earned their
compensation. They conceded misjudgments in the subprime debacle,
while one Republican lawmaker blasted the hearing as "a sanctimonious
search for scapegoats."

Virginia Rep. Tom Davis said, "Punishing individual corporate
executives with public floggings like this may be a politically
satisfying ritual -- like an island tribe sacrificing a virgin to a
grumbling volcano.

"But in the end, it won't answer the questions ... about corporate
responsibility and economic stability."

The hearing marked Congress' latest foray into one of corporate
America's most enduring controversies -- the sky-rocketing
compensation of chief executive officers.

On a global scale, U.S. CEOs earn considerably more money on average
than their peers abroad, and about 600 times more than the average
U.S. worker, up from just 40 times in 1980, according to academic
studies of executive pay.

With companies headed into the spring annual meeting season when they
disclose managers' compensation, the rich winnings of some financial
executives are contrasting starkly with heavy losses at many firms as
a historic home price bubble deflates.

Maryland Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings said he was not hunting
scapegoats. But looking at Mozilo, he said, "You run the largest
mortgage originator in the country. If you don't have some personal
responsibility, I don't know who does."

U.S. banks have written off more than $120 billion in assets in the
housing slump, while thousands of jobs have been lost and home
foreclosures are soaring to record highs.

Cummings said he was disturbed by what he said was a "disconnect"
between the troubles of average homeowners and the generous golden
parachute severance deals some executives get.

"I worry about this whole culture where the little guy gets squeezed
and next thing you know, he has a debt, not a house ... and the
parachutes just drift on up the golf course."

Rep. Peter Welch asked the three managers why Goldman Sachs (GS.N) has
avoided, so far, huge subprime losses while their banks have not, and
yet they were paid handsomely.

"That's the disconnect that I think a lot of us are feeling," said the
Vermont Democrat.

O'Neal and Prince stepped down from their CEO posts last year, while
Mozilo is planning to leave if his company is bought out by Bank of
America Corp (BAC.N).

Nell Minow, editor of The Corporate Library and an investor rights
advocate, at the hearing said, "There is an obvious disconnect between
the performance of these CEOs and the compensation they received. They
led the companies in a risky strategic direction that resulted in
significant losses."

The executives, along with members of their companies' boards who also
testified, defended their pay packages as being aligned with
shareholder interests, competitive in the market for management
talent, and overseen properly by directors.

But Minow criticized "all-upside, no downside pay plans." She said a
key American corporate governance weakness, even in the post-Enron
era, remains investors' inability to do much about excessive CEO pay
approved by subservient boards.

She urged the Senate to adopt legislation already passed in the House
to give shareholders a non-binding "say on pay."

(Reporting by Kevin Drawbaugh; Editing by Diane)