Money in the Bank...

This is John Thain, the CEO of Merrill Lynch. He was the highest paid CEO in 2007, with a salary of $83.1 million. In my opinion, this is an outrageous salary. Don't get me wrong, it is a lot of responsibility and pressure to run a major corporation, and CEOs definitely deserve a strong salary. The question is , Is this amount of money reasonable?

Considering all that is going on in the economy with increased gas and food prices, a suffering housing market, layoffs and the most of the economy watching their money disappear in these poor conditions, the pay of CEOs continues to increase, many times with the performance of their companies steadily decreasing(Half of the CEOs in the top 10 of highest paid CEOs are leading companies whose profits have significantly dropped the past year). The median salary for CEOs in 2007 was $8.4 million, which was a 3.5 percent increase from 2006.

The thing that is astonishing to me is that the pay for executives seems to increase despite poor performance. There seems to be no accountability for CEOs who are not able to improve suffering companies. A message is being sent that the worst you do the more money you will make. Anyone can prosper with that type of standard. I also wonder why are executives paid so much, but the working class, blue collar workers struggle to make ends meet and pull a decent check. Sometimes they do not even know if they will have their jobs when they wake up for work the next day.

More power to the executives, they are getting their money, whether it is deserved or not. But, I think their should definitely be consideration of a performance based salary, especially in these economic times. Maybe its just the way of the world, but does that make it right? Just something to think about.

Top 10 Highest Paid CEOs
1. John Thain, Merrill Lynch, $83.1 million
2. Leslie Moonves, CBS Corp., $67.6 million
3. Richard Ackerson, Freeport-McMoran Cooper & Gold, Inc., $65.3 million
4. Bob Simpson, XTO Energy, $56.6 million
5. Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., $53.9 million
6. Kenneth Chenault, American Express Co., $51.7 million
7. Eugene Isenberg, Nabors Industries Ltd., $44.6 million
8. John Mack, Morgan Stanley, $41.7 million
9. Glenn Murphy, Gap Inc., $39.1 million
10. Ray Irany, Occidental Petroleum Corp., $34.2 million