Are the Davos Men Getting a Bit Nervous?
Normally I try not to pay much attention to Davos because it is meant to reinforce the idea that plutocracy is simply a manifestation of natural aristocracy.
Read more...Category Archives: CEO compensation
Bill Black: Dimon Does Davos, and His Board Gives Him a Raise
Yves here. It’s become tough work keeping up with the continuing large gap between Dimon hagiography in the media and his dubious accomplishments. So hat’s off to Bill Black for staying on this beat.
Read more...New Study Confirms that Lower Corporate Tax Rates Don’t Create Jobs
orporate executives love to peddle the notion that they need to have their low tax payments reduced even further, even as the share of GDP represented by company profits is at unprecedentedly high levels.
Read more...The Skunk Party Manifesto
The best political system that money can buy is doing a great job for its customers and a lousy job for the rest of us.
Read more...Why the “Maximizing Shareholder Value” Theory of Corporate Governance is Bogus
One mantra you see regularly in the business and popular press goes something along the lines of “the CEO and board have a fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value.”
That is untrue. Moreover, the widespread acceptance of that false notion has done considerable harm.
Read more...Why CEO Pay Will Keep Rising to Even More Insanely Unjustified Levels While Ordinary Workers Get Squeezed
Even casual scrutiny will tell you that the current ridiculous levels of CEO pay bear no relationship to anything other than their highly developed rent extraction skills.
Read more...Lynn Parramore: The Depressing Tale of How Greedy Financial Titans Crushed Innovation and Destroyed Our Economy
Whatever happened to innovation in America?
Read more...NYU Administrators Create Student Debt Slaves to Subsidize Summer Homes, Ginormous Pensions
When union members demand decent pay levels and work conditions, they are charged with featherbedding and overmanning or the new neoliberal catchall, “demanding uncompetitive wages”. But when the upper crust loots institutions, the mainstream media is typically missing in action.
Read more...Bill Black: Great Moments in Nobel Prize History – 2007 Winner Pumps for Plutocracy, Billionaire CEOs
The first article in a series by Black on the remarkable, in the bad sense of the work, work by Nobel prize winners on regulation.
Read more...Wolf Richter: The Stunning Differences In European Costs Of Labor – Or Why “Competitiveness” Is A Beggar-Thy-Neighbor Strategy
By Wolf Richter, San Francisco based executive, entrepreneur, start up specialist, and author, with extensive international work experience. Cross posted from Testosterone Pit.
The ominous term, “competitiveness” has been bandied about as the real issue, the one that causes European countries, in particular some of those stuck in the Eurozone, to sink ever deeper into their fiasco. To fix that issue, “structural reforms,” or austerity, have been invoked regardless of how much blood might stain the streets. And a core element of these structural reforms is bringing down the cost of labor. But productivity, infrastructure, transportation costs, corruption, training and education, etc. all figure prominently into this equation. Cost of labor is not the only factor.
Read more...Why Does No One Speak of America’s Oligarchs?
One of the striking elements of the demonization of Cyprus was how it was depicted as a willing tool of Russian money launderers and oligarchs. But notice another implicit part of the story: that Russia’s oligarchs and “dirty money” are distinctive national creation. Do you ever hear Carlos Slim or Rupert Murdoch or the Koch Brothers described as oligarchs?
Read more...Mirabile Dictu! More Executive Pay Revolt as Swiss Impose Curbs
It isn’t clear how effective the pushback against stratospheric top-level compensation will be, but the howls in the European media suggests that the corporate overlords really are concerned.
Read more...Jack Lew’s Grotesque Citi Employment Deal and the Institutionalization of Corruption
Corruption has now become so routine in Washington that improprieties far worse than Turbo Timmie’s implausible failure to pay taxes on income from his days working as a consultant to the World Bank barely evoke a yawn from the media. Apparently the fourth estate is either so bedazzled by star turns, like Michelle Obama presenting at the Oscars (!!!) or so cowed by the prospect of being cut off from information that it dutifully falls in line.
Read more...Krugman Ponders the Fallen State of US Labor
Paul Krugman is troubled by this chart from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and is looking for explanations.
Read more...Citi Cuts 11,000 Jobs Rather Than Lower Pay, Illustrating Rentier Capitalism in Operation
Citi is a particularly blatant example of a way of operating that has become endemic in American business: when things get tough, throw as many employees as possible under the bus, and use that to maintain or even increase the pay of the top echelon.
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