Is your blood boiling yet? We deficit spend to support and aid corporations over the hump during the Great Recession. We lend corporations billions at near zero percent interest while they loan it back to the middle class at interest rates north of 15%. The working man is paying up to 35% in taxes as these CEOs are paid in stocks whose appreciation is taxed at 15%. CEOs are getting bonuses for the unpatriotic and un-American stance of destroying American jobs and exporting them overseas. Inasmuch as the country has bailed out a myriad of corporations, they continue to fight to avoid taxes even though their imbalanced taxation is partially responsible for our cumulative budget deficit.
America is still the greatest country in the world. America still has the largest economy. America still has the largest spending consumers. It is time that consumers, the middle class force policies that prevent the destruction of our way of life. If we pay CEOs only for profit maximization without including the moral and social component to our country, we will lower the middle class standard of living for the foreseeable future.
My Book: As I See It: Class Warfare The Only Resort To Right Wing Doom
Book’s Webpage: http://bit.ly/9sJpA1 – Twitter: http://twitter.com/egbertowillies
CEO Pay Now Exceeds Pre-Recession Levels: Equilar
By RACHEL BECK 05/ 6/11 07:01 AM ET
NEW YORK — In the boardroom, it’s as if the Great Recession never happened.
CEOs at the nation’s largest companies were paid better last year than they were in 2007, when the economy was booming, the stock market set a record high and unemployment was roughly half what it is today.
The typical pay package for the head of a company in the Standard & Poor’s 500 was $9 million in 2010, according to an analysis by The Associated Press using data provided by Equilar, an executive compensation research firm. That was 24 percent higher than a year earlier, reversing two years of declines.
Executives were showered with more pay of all types – salaries, bonuses, stock, options and perks. The biggest gains came in cash bonuses: Two-thirds of executives got a bigger one than they had in 2009, some more than three times as big.
CEOs were rewarded because corporate profits soared in 2010 as the economy gradually got stronger and companies continued to cut costs. Profit for the companies in the AP analysis rose 41 percent last year.
The stock market also continued its climb. Stocks rose 13 percent in 2010 and have now almost doubled since March 2009. The market’s two-year run has fattened executive bonuses because some CEOs are rewarded for how the company’s stock does.
Separately, the bull market has left CEOs enormous paper gains on stock and options they were granted as part of pay packages in 2009 and 2010. They are already worth $6.3 billion, 68 percent more than the companies thought they would be worth over the lifetime of the grants.
The AP used the Equilar data to analyze CEO pay packages at 334 companies in the S&P 500 that had filed statements with federal regulators through April 29. Pay was analyzed at companies that had the same CEO in both 2009 and 2010. The AP’s analysis is the most comprehensive of 2010 compensation.
Among the other findings in the AP analysis:
_ The highest-paid CEO in 2010 was Philippe Dauman of Viacom, the entertainment company that owns MTV, Nickelodeon and Paramount Pictures. He received a pay package valued at $84.5 million, two and a half times what he made the year before. He signed a contract in April 2010 that included stock and options valued by the company at $54.2 million when they were granted.
_ Six of the 10 best-paid CEOs come from media or entertainment, industries helped by a recovery in advertising and innovations in digital distribution. Besides Dauman, they are Leslie Moonves of CBS, $56.9 million; David Zaslav of Discovery Communications, $42.6 million; Brian Roberts of Comcast, $31.1 million; Robert Iger of Walt Disney, $28 million; and Jeff Bewkes of Time Warner, $26.1 million.
_ The 10 highest-paid CEOs made $440 million in 2010, a third more than the top 10 made in 2009. Four CEOs – Dauman, Moonves, Roberts and Ray Irani of Occidental Petroleum – were on the Top 10 list both years.
To calculate CEO pay, the AP adds an executive’s salary, bonuses, perks, any interest on deferred pay that’s above market interest rates, and the value a company places on stock and stock options awarded during the year.
The median pay value of $9 million, calculated by Equilar, is the midpoint of the companies used in the AP analysis; half of the CEOs made more and half made less. In 2007, the median pay was $8.4 million. In 2008 it was $7.6 million, and in 2009 it was $7.2 million. The $9 million median for 2010 is the highest since the AP began the analysis in 2006.
