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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Skeeter Bug who wrote (68013)	9/22/1999 11:28:00 AM
From: Don Lloyd	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 132070

SB - (my issue is that ceo's are making massive compensation due to massive and reckless credit creation that their skill didn't impact at all. earnings grow 15% while stocks appreciate 50%. too much money is the root cause and these ceos don't print money... most of the time ;-) ) The CEOs don't print money, but the company and shareholder results are highly sensitive to the CEO. If you could do a controlled experiment, trying 10 different CEOs for a given company and looking at the results 10 years downstream, you would see that the range of results could easily be 100's of billions of dollars of market cap, and that no two would likely give results within a billion dollars of each other. For the given company, it would be insane to try to economize on compensation if that produced any CEO except the one that projected out to be the one most suited to the given company. Regards, Don

To: Skeeter Bug who wrote (68013)	9/22/1999 11:36:00 AM
From: per strandberg	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

Skeet, We are having these discussions about as well. Over the last ten years, salaries are up about 30%, but compensations (often via option deals ) to the chief executives have risen several hundred percent. Unfortunately, neither productivity nor earnings have had a similar development. In many cases, the rewards are not connected to how well the company is performing. The most common argument for these increases is "The other CEOs in similar positions are getting paid this much". As most big business is conducted by the same people in different positions, there is a widespread "You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours"-attitude when it comes to receiving option deals and golden parachutes. In very few situations have I observed that the same CEO have markedly improved his performance when his compensation has been doubled. This is particularly notable in the public sector, where the only thing the new, highly paid executives seem to do is shutting down postal offices, railway services etc. As a taxpayer, I think we are paying more and more for less and less. As a shareholder I think the same applies. Regards Per S

To: Skeeter Bug who wrote (68013)	9/22/1999 11:42:00 AM
From: Freedom Fighter	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

Skeet, >>my issue is that ceo's are making massive compensation due to massive and reckless credit creation that their skill didn't impact at all. earnings grow 15% while stocks appreciate 50%. too much money is the root cause and these ceos don't print money... most of the time ;-)<< I think this observation in combination with others says a lot about the monetary policy and overall attitude of the 90s. Government budgets have become more dependent on the bull market for capital gains taxes. CEOs and other high level managers are raking in millions of dollars in stock option compensation due to the bull market. Wall St. and banking profits are in large part dependent on commissions, deals, IPOs, underwriting, trading profits, and management fees tied to market cap and the bull market. The public is rooting for the bull market to continue. The financial media and its advertising revenues are tied to the bull market. It's really tough to find a vested interest or political influence that wants money to be sound, credit to be tight, accounting standards to be honest, economic stats to be unbiased, and economic policy to be viewed from a long term perspective. Wayne