Weekend Economists: "So much to do, so little done, such things to be." April 20-22, 2012

[Demeter]

37. US chief swims in millions as unemployed sink deeper Brian McGrory

http://www.smh.com.au/business/us-chief-swims-in-millions-as-unemployed-sink-deeper-20120413-1wz0t.html

THE FIRST QUESTION YOU HAVE TO ASK IS: WHY DO WE HAVE TO GO TO AUSTRALIA TO HEAR ABOUT THIS LOCAL SCANDAL?

AT SOME point in the future, historians will look back at this era as the time when America basically lost its collective mind.

The latest example is Ted Kelly, the recently retired chief executive officer of Boston's Liberty Mutual insurance company. Ask any official or business person across the state, and they'll sing Ted Kelly's praises: good guy, insanely smart, devoted to the common cause, all of that manifest in that Liberty Mutual grew at breakneck speed under his leadership and gave millions of dollars away.

There's something else, though, that came out this week. Mr Kelly had an annual compensation package of $US50 million for the past four years. Yes, there's a zero after the 5. That's just shy of a million dollars a week, $192,000 per working day, $24,000 an hour. To run an insurance company....every Liberty Mutual policyholder, all those regular people making ends meet at kitchen tables, have paid for Mr Kelly to take $200 million out of the company, their company, over the past four years.

Every Massachusetts taxpayer is footing part of his salary, given that the state granted Kelly's company a $46.5 million tax break for a new headquarters in Boston. The whole thing is grotesque...Was there no one else on the planet who could do it nearly as well for $10 million? These boards (OF DIRECTORS), of course, are the real problem. Mr Kelly revealed this week that the Liberty Mutual directors are paid $200,000 a year, a figure never previously reported....This isn't fair market value; it's a rigged game: executives hurling bundles of money at each other, then using the raises as benchmarks. Is there a synonym here for grotesque?