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

To: Don Lloyd who wrote (68021)	9/22/1999 12:35:00 PM
From: benwood	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

Don, what you said is true, a good CEO can make a difference. Was this just phenomenon of the CEO being so vitally important only discovered in 1990 when top executive salaries began to skyrocket? There is a positive feedback loop now with CEO salaries and stock appreciation which has resulted in every trick in the book being used to bolster the stock price even when it's at the expense of the long term health of the company and/or it's employees. Much of it is purely greed driven, in my opinion, by the frequently self-serving top executives (IBM for example) and/or by the shareholders who figure, "What's another 25 million for the big guy if my stock goes up 50% again this year?" It's also greed combined with panic by the boards of these same companies: we'd better do everything we can to sign this guy, cuz our projections show he's the one that will allow us to overtake Microsoft! And with hundreds of billions of dollars in market cap at stake, might as well pay him a gazillion dollars, because it won't matter when we're all rich!" Later, "Boy, that guy stunk, give him his golden parachute and let's get us another free agent superstar!"