Fat Cat CEOs Strike Back at Congress

[babylonsister]

Congress, I hope you're paying attention!

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/50395/


Fat Cat CEOs Strike Back at Congress

By Sarah Anderson and Sam Pizzigati, AlterNet. Posted April 13, 2007.

The CEOs who sit on the powerful Business Roundtable are working to stop Congress from moving ahead with executive pay reform. The reason? It's all personal.

The 160 corporate CEOs who make up the Business Roundtable -- the nation's single most influential business lobbying group -- don't appear to think so. The Business Roundtable is currently leading the corporate charge against congressional efforts to legislate new checks on executive compensation.

Executive pay reforms already in place, the group's president assured Congress last month, are more than adequately addressing the concerns Americans may have about corporate behavior.

"A wave of reforms over the past five years," the Business Roundtable's John Castellani testified, "has resulted in improved investor confidence in our corporations, growth in the stock market and continued shareholder returns."

CEOs in the Business Roundtable do have one more reason -- unmentioned in Castellani's testimony -- to feel comfortable with today's executive pay status quo. They're making out like bandits.

In 2006, Business Roundtable execs took home paychecks that added up to a $9.9 million median. The comparable take-home for major corporate CEOs overall, according to just-released Wall Street Journal data: only $6.5 million.

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[aquart]

1. These people are insufficiently taxed.

No one should be so rich that all he has left to buy is his government.

[DBoon]

2. they aren't insufficiently taxed

they make too damn much to begin with

[nykym]

3. Share the wealth HA HA!

So lets see if a CEO who was making $6.5 million reinvested say $1 million back into his company of say 2,000 workers in the form of a raise for each - that would be a $500.00 raise for each. Not bad plus think of all the warmth it would generate amoung his employees! Food for thought Fat Cats!

[mainegreen]

4. Improved investor relations and shareholder returns? They don't get it!

It's about employees making 8 bucks an hour, holding no stocks, getting no profit sharing while CEOs make 100 million for cutting wages and shipping jobs overseas.