Naked Capitalism Link of the Day

Today's link: Paychecks as Big as Tajikistan, by Gretchen Morgenson at the New York Times:

Let’s begin with the view from 30,000 feet. Total executive pay increased by 13.9 percent in 2010 among the 483 companies where data was available for the analysis. The total pay for those companies’ 2,591 named executives, before taxes, was $14.3 billion.
That’s some pile of pay, right? But Mr. Ciesielski puts it into perspective by noting that the total is almost equal to the gross domestic product of Tajikistan, which has a population of more than 7 million.
Warming to his subject, Mr. Ciesielski also determined that 158 companies paid more in cash compensation to their top guys and gals last year than they paid in audit fees to their accounting firms. Thirty-two companies paid their top executives more in 2010 than they paid in cash income taxes.
The report also blows a hole in the argument that stock grants to executives align the interests of managers with those of shareholders. The report calculated that at 179 companies in the study, the average value of stockholders’ stakes fell between 2008 and 2010 while the top executives at those companies received raises. The report really gets meaty when it compares executive pay with items like research and development costs, and earnings per share.

This makes the point that executive pay often doesn't match company performance, or any reasonable assessment of the executive's value.  In conjuction with the previous post on income inequality, I think we ought to consider the question, how much is too much?  There are some other good links today, especially one reviewing a new book about Churchill and the Bengali famine in World War II.