Executive pay-there they go again

BY JIM HIGHTOWER

If you hit yourself over the head wilh a ballpeen hammer that's slu-pid. But if you do it again, that's insane.

Welcome to the insanity of Wall Street. I laving fostered a corrupting l Lilt ure of banker greed by ba.sing Ihe lavish p.iy of top executives on their ability to score short term profits (whether by bu.'k or crook) the reckless financial titans crashed their own banks and our economy. So, barely a year after the crash, what's the response of the banks? "Hey," they're shouting, "that was fun let's do it again!

James Reda, an executive pay con­sultant, studied ihe changes that 191 of America's largest hanks and corporations have made this year in the way they reward top managers. With the public outraged by exi\iiliv. excess and Congress considering pay limits, Red a presumed that most busses would have cut back on ihe short-term, grab-all-you-can pay incentives ,md shifted to a rational system thai rewards executives for long-term performance.

Wrong. It seems thai corporate culture is at war with ..sanity. Reda found that companies did change their pay policies but by increasing short term incentives and actually reducing incentives for sound long-term performance! Reda found that these big outfits are even retaining such ridiculous perks as "tax gross-ups," which mean that exutives, don't even have to shell out for the taxes they owe on their exhorbitant pay; instead, shareholders pick up their lax labs.

The message to pampered managers is clear: You'll be paid more if you take additional unethical shortcuts and take greater speculative risks than you did before.