Reply #37: CEOs have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

(this is a repost of my reply to a similar article over at the Editorial forum today that went nowhere)

The job of executives at "publicly traded companies" is to MAKE MONEY FOR THE SHAREHOLDERS - not to siphon it off for themselves in gigantic cookies that they take out of the cookie jar. Their shareholders get remaining crumbs and their employees and retirees get the crumbs of the crumbs.

They are taking money that rightfully should be plowed back in the form of capital improvements or research and development or to shore up those pension plans they are always asking for government bail-outs of or screwing their retirees out of.

They also "hide" compensation in the form of perks you don't even know about (Remember Jack Welch and the penthouse and the jets and the toilet paper?) as well as stock options.

All executive compensation should be in plain English in their prospectus along with perks and bennies and options so that someone buying their stock might say, "gee, I'm investing my dollars in this company in order to pay the CEO hundreds of millions of dollars so that I might get a measley return in dividends or I can pray the stock price goes up and I'm smart enough to sell before other people catch onto the Ponzi aspects of this."

They and the boards that approve this legal(?)looting should be hauled out in manacles for defrauding the stockholders. They are crooks!!They are also undermining the confidence in the stock market. These guys often get their gazillions regardless of how their companies do. Don't even get me started on the golden parachutes!

I don't care what privately held companies do. But I do think executive compensation in publicly held companies should be examined and yes, (gasp!) regulated. 100 times the average company salary would make the head of WalMart or any other company share the wealth with the employees and actually WANT them to be paid a decent wage. Any excess after operating expenses and capital improvements and R&D is PROFIT that should be distributed to the shareholders. They (the CEOs) can get their extra money in dividends in the company stock they own just like the rest of us.