Economic Voyeurism

The NY Times has an interactive graphic "Executive Pay: The Bottom Line for Those at the Top" The that lets you peer into the pockets of the top 200 corporate executives in America. It lets you see how much they earned in 2007, how it is broken down, how they compare to their peers, how much they have accumulated, as well as rankings for salary and wealth. For somebody who wants to play economic voyeur it is a treasure trove of info.

I find it an interesting "test" to run down the list seeing how the pay raise/decline tracks the stock rise/decline. Answer: not very accurately.

Funny, I find it interesting that some of the wealthiest guys are at the very bottom. They don't take much in pay, but a surprising number have created real wealth, e.g. Warren Buffet and Steve Jobs.

But the real joy comes from the horror stories:

• On the flip side, some of they guys with the biggest pay have destroyed their company's equity, e.g. John Thain of Merrill Lynch is "tops" in pay, the #1 guy at $83.79M, but he creamed his company. Its stock plunged 41%.
• A guy like Steve Odland of Office Depot saw his salary go up by 85% as he managed to wipe out 64% of the shareholder equity. Does that make any sense?
• Kerry K. Killinger (love that name!) was 112th on executive pay with a take home of $14.36M while blowing away (I can't resist, "killing") 65% of shareholder value. Do you think they felt they got their money's worth?