U.S. Companies Broke Records Last Year – Wow! ???

For those who follow the economy we know, in spite of all the news of recessions and the like, the economy has grown at a steady rate for a long time. So, we all are a lot richer than we used to be right? Wrong, but some are making out like bandits and that may be an appropriate term.

The head of your run of the mill public company make $9.6 million in 2011, according to Equilar, an executive pay research firm. That’s a lot of moola; up 6% from the year before.

Now to be fair companies have reduced the cash bonuses for these CEOs but they gave them more in stock. They good part of that is that stock price levels are to reflect the health of the company so it rewards good CEOs unlike the past.

Before you get too excited about all this if you are a shareholder in one of these companies you dividends only went up by 2%.

Now if you work for one of these companies in an ordinary position you would have to work 244 years to make that type of money. Your pay went up 1% last year but of course that is less than the inflation rate you actually you lost money.

I found it of particular interest that CEOs running health-care companies made on average $10.8 million. So let’s blame Obamacare for rising health costs???

To be fair not every CEO got a raise last year. Of the 3,000 companies that voted in 2011 43 rejected pay increases for the CEOs. Remember good on CEO Vikram Pandit of Citigroup only took $1.00 for his work in 2010. They wanted to give him $15 million, however shareholders did note that while the company returned to profitability they saw their stock plunge 44%. They weren’t happy.

Ah the trials and tribulations of the 1%.

Here are the companies that gave the top pay to their CEOs: 10 Alan Mulally Ford 29.5 million up 11% ; 9 John P. Daane,Altera $29.6 million up 278%; 8 Clarence P. Cazalot Jr., Marathon Oil $29.9 million up 239%; 7 Robert A. Iger, Walt Disney $31.4 million up 12%; 6 David M. Cote, Honeywell International $35.7 million up 135%; 5 Philppe P. Dauman, Viacom $43.1 million up 49%; 4. Sanjay K. Jha, Motorola Mobility $47.2 million up 262%; 3 David M. Zaslav, Discovery Communications$52.4 million up 23%; 2 Leslie Moonves, CBS $68.4 million up 20%; 1. David Simon, Simon Property Group $137.2 million up 458%.

By my calculations those top ten made $508.4 million dollars last year.