Once these CEOs reach a certain level they can run several companies into the ground.

what level is that? meta ceo? This is not what happens not by a long shot. The ONLY people I know that talk like this are those that actually have no idea and have spent time gaining status as one of the prols complaining about the top to others that don’t know. kind of like feminists telling women what men really think. You get the same validity.

This is a totally false statement. There is no magical level and a cursory glance at ceo histories shows it to be a lie.

walk away with huge money, and get another CEO job within months.

Their settlements are no where near what they make if they succeed (and many of them are tied to performance and special rules!). What you see as huge money is a huge financial hit to them. They don’t want that settlement. That settlement often means that they have to start over, and often means they lose their wives and family.

You obviously are not a person with a high level position who has been sacked. The line workers get jobs much faster than those at higher places as the turnover at that level is low. I am not a CEO but it took me more than a year to get a new job, because the higher the salary, the fewer the jobs, the higher the competition, and the slower the consideration, and so forth.

over the years i have met lots of people that talk like you DANE but never one who actually did the kind of work that they are claiming to know all about.

Their mental image descriptions don’t match reality at all.

The CEO reports to a BOARD. They don’t get to run companies into the ground then get a new change a month later. your snarky quick view is great when talking to factory workers when you want them to rally and strike to get you power, but it sucks if its trying to actually talk about what they really do and what they really face.

The ones that your looking at that get those chutes are people that run corporations whose numbers of employees exceed the populations in large cities and some small countries.

Walmart has 1.8 million employees… However wal mart made 11 billion in profit… that was after paying high CEO salaries. If walmart tanked tomorrow, you would look at it as the history meant nothing, and that if run correctly it would have lasted in perpetuity.

do you really think the CEO of that can find a comparable position in a few months?

Fuld, the head of lehman brothers was number 21 on CEO compensation.

Want to hear how much you sound like a parrot? (probably not)..

Here is someone that sounds like you… a Marxian
The Today Show this morning had a segment about all the “Golden Parachutes” — it’s enough to make you puke. Top financial execs walking away with MULTI-MILLIONS and turning around and buying mega-mansions and multi-million dollar residences while their employees go hat in hand trying to find a job now, and while their clients watch their 401Ks and IRAs and other investment accounts drop like rocks.

Bear Stearns – James E. Cayne: $13.4 Million
Wachovia – G. Kennedy Thompson: $34.5 Million
Lehman Brothers – Richard S. Fuld, Jr.: $22 Million
Merrill Lynch – John A. Thain: $25 Million (current BOA sale)
Merrill Lynch – Stanley O’Neal: $161.5 Million (October 2007)
Citigroup – Charles O. Prince, III: $40 Million
Countrywide – Angelo R. Mozilo: $120 Million

Your spouting a view point that is 100 years old and false.
Do you want to hear how much yours is a party line?

I think the important point that one of the gentlemen was trying to make (when not being interrupted and talked-over by the guy) was that it’s fine to pay these hot shots the big bucks while the companies are performing at their best (keeping in mind that is what they were hired to do in the first place); however, for them to run the companies into the ground and leave everyone holding the bag and just walk away with millions in their pocket is grand larceny. While their companies can be subjected to a “down turn”, there is no “down turn” for them — they ride on a one-way ticket to wealth.

Can you please give me an example Dane of Fuld running the company into the ground?

Dane, are you speaking from knowing such people, or speaking from the fat cat assumptions that I also was referring to? You totally missed something key in my post. A clear example of such a situation created by state mandate!

I have worked corporate for most of my career, and have watched people tank this way. I have watched them live and die in stress related conditions because they know that if they lose this, they don’t get another chance like it. they become married to the companies they work for more often than not. Over the years i have watched lots of management types come, rise, make a screw up, and have to switch careers as they are dead in the water.

You didn’t listen to what I said in my post that backs up what I am saying. However, you spouted the Marxian thing that being a CEO is easy street and candyland, and actually think I am the one being silly “because everyone knows” that Marxian descriptions of the world are the valid ones (and never ask how come so many layabouts in the west happen to be controlling the worldl and outproducing the socialists who toil so hard).

My post presented a law created in 1977. That law proscribes business practices that are bad. You are claiming they can run the business into the ground and get new jobs, but I showed that the state created a situation of hot potato. That at some point, the banks were going to have to pay for the bad loans that the state was mandating they make! Of course the CEO in charge at that time would have an impossible time explaining that the reason things are running into the ground is the law. So what BOARDS do, you know, the people you claim “Unless the stockholders get involved (which they rarely do) these folks just keep getting recycled”, is fire the CEO, and put a new one in place to clean the slate. His first task is to re-org so that you cant compare prior productivities to current ones clearly. The CEO fired now is looking for a board to hire him. your post shows that your TOTALLY ignorant at business at that level, and how a lot of it is mandated by SEC rules and so forth. How many boards does each of the people on the board that fired him sit on? do you think they will let him sit on other companies boards? Do you think his industry will just put him at the top of another company. Obviously you do. but then again, obviously your not a CEO, know how hard they work, or a board member or major stock holder.

What? Didn’t you get the word???

We have an opportunity to throw out the sector of government most directly responsible for the current mess in less than SIX WEEKS.

We should throw the bums out. Dem, Rep, it really doesn’t matter now, does it?

Regulating the legislative roster based on when a rep or senator has decided they’ve made enough money is killing the country.

TTBO!

My gut tells me thats about where interest rates should be now. There is a major flaw in a fed chairman coming out every quarter and just speaking attractive rates into existence. Those rates should be based on the mathematical reality of market conditions. Not some feel good number that merely postpones the shit hitting the fan.

Shit, meet fan.