CEOs defend pay

Today the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee heard testimony from three corporate executives dealing with how they keep reeling in millions of dollars while contributing to the subprime mortgage crisis that has their companies losing hundreds of millions of dollars. The CEOs brought in were Angelo Mozilo of Countrywide Financial Corp.; Stanley O'Neal, formerly of Merrill Lynch & Co; and Charles Prince, formerly of Citigroup Inc.. Mozilo argued that “As our company did well, I did well, but when our company did not do well, as in 2007, my direct compensation and the value of my holdings declined materially, which is as it should be”. The problem that he is not seeing though is that even when his company has a down year he is still making around seven figures probably. For instance Mozilo’s company lost 1.2 billion in the third quarter of 2007 then proceeded to lose another 422 million in the 4^th quarter. Yet with all of this he still earned a 1.9 million dollar salary, $20 million in stock awards, and then sold another $121 million in stock. While its obvious a CEO of a fortune 500 company is going to make a very large amount of money, they shouldn’t be getting rewarded, especially when their companies are contributing to the United States going into a recession.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/07/AR2008030700390.html