Call against high CEO pay grow louder

[lsbskins1]

Calls against big CEO pay grow louder - Yahoo! News

Corporate boards in recent years have rubber-stamped generous bonus packages for an elite set of executives, a reflection of a go-go stock market and soaring profits. Now, as the credit crisis roils Wall Street and decimates stock prices, shareholders are demanding a voice.

Notice how the CEO mentioned basically says, Our stock holders are too stupid to have a say in CEO pay. I thought all these CEOs were just working for the "stockholders" and were "accountable to the stockholders". This is what all the "Free Market" people tell me all the time. They tell me I am crazy to believe that CEOs are only interested in enriching themselves. They tell me the Boards of all these companies aren't just groups of like-minded jerks who vote for each others pay raises and ignore what really helps the business. They tell me it is impossible for them to behave this way, because the "stockholders hire them and control them". Seems maybe that ain't the case.

[Anmon]

there is already a thread about this

[another day]

Jeez... greedy bastards. They say shareholders don't have the "understanding" to make this decision, but NO ONE, no matter what job you do, no matter how many hours you work or how stressful it is, deserves 60 mil + a year.

I love this quote from greedy moneygrabbing suit number 276... ""This would create a feedback loop. It would create a cloud, a constraint, a limitation on decisions that have been at the heart of what a board has done," he said at the company's annual meeting."

What the hell does that even mean? I'll take "meaningless blather to distract from reality of the situation" for 500 alec.

Who does he think he's kidding? What it would do is create a "constraint" on their exorbitant paychecks and maybe mean they take a reasonable amount of money from the companies profits rather then obscenely huge chunks of it.

[tivodan1116]

Quote by: another day Jeez... greedy bastards. They say shareholders don't have the "understanding" to make this decision, but NO ONE, no matter what job you do, no matter how many hours you work or how stressful it is, deserves 60 mil + a year.

Based upon what, other than your own bias against the wealthy?

In a free system there is no such thing as being under or overpaid.

[Anmon]

Quote by: tivodan1116 In a free system there is no such thing as being under or overpaid.

I think 100 million dollar handshakes when you retire is way over the top.

[another day]

Quote by: tivodan1116 Based upon what, other than your own bias against the wealthy? In a free system there is no such thing as being under or overpaid.

Umm... these are public companies.

The shareholders literally have a stake in the company. I was simply saying the ceo's claim that shareholders don't have the "financial knowledge" to lower their pay is bullshit because it has nothing to do with that, only to do with their own greed.

I have no problem with private companies overpaying their ceo's and paying their workers minimum wage. That's what we have strikes and unions for. But in this case the ceo's are basically conning their shareholders by holding these fixed boardroom commitees comprised of ceos who all have the same interest of robbing their shareholders of profits for themselves.

[Maryjane]

Notice how the CEO mentioned basically says, Our stock holders are too stupid to have a say in CEO pay.

Sadly, I'll have to agree with him. But in the stock holders defense, they swamp you with so much literature a typical person with a very diversified portfolio doesn't have time to go thru it all. (much less understand it) Most of what they send me goes in the trash. Guilty as charged.

[tivodan1116]

Quote by: Anmon I think 100 million dollar handshakes when you retire is way over the top.

Ok, well, you're free to think that. It doesn't change the truth of what I said.

[Maryjane]

If I learned anything in business, a handshake (or a verbal agreement) isn't worth the paper it's not printed on.

[grandpa]

Quote by: Maryjane If I learned anything in business, a handshake (or a verbal agreement) isn't worth the paper it's not printed on.

The dubious nature of contracts should be learned early on.

Grandpa h.

[Maryjane]

Yup, I'm just getting the word out to save someone else the pain and suffering I went through. It was a hard lesson for sure.

[kensai_soke77]

Excerpt from an article in favor for high CEO pay.

The Ayn Rand Institute: Why Are CEOs Paid So Much? (Providence Journal)

How big an influence can one man have on the fortunes of the entire corporation? Consider the impact of Jack Welch on General Electric. Before his tenure as CEO, the company was a bloated giant, floundering under its own weight. Splintered into dozens of distinct and inefficient business units, GE was scarcely making a profit. Welch turned it around. He streamlined and reorganized the company's operations and implemented a sound business strategy yielding more than $400 billion worth of shareholder wealth. In business, success requires long-range thinking. But CEOs must project a strategic game plan in terms not merely of a month or two, but of years and decades. A biotechnology company, for example, may spend 15 years and billions of dollars developing a new cancer-fighting medicine. Success is impossible without the business acumen of its CEO. For years before a marketable product exists, he must raise sufficient capital to sustain the research. What long-term business model will attract venture capital? Should the company accept partial short-term sponsorship from a large drug manufacturer in exchange for a modest royalty on the drug in the future--or risk going it alone and possibly running out of funds? It is on such decisions that a company's success is made--and lives of cancer patients may depend. In order to be successful in the long range, the CEO's strategy must encompass countless factors. He must devise a plan to grow the business in the face of competitors, not only from within the United States, but from any and every region of today's global economy. The CEO calls the plays for a team of tens (and sometimes hundreds) of thousands of workers. All of the actions of every employee and every aspect of the business must be coordinated and integrated to produce the cars, computers or CAT scanners that yield profits to the company. It is the CEO who is responsible for that integration.