With apologies to the group War:
"CEO s, huh!
What are they good for?
Absolutely nothing!"
If you are looking for good reality-based entertainment, you need look no further than some of the trials of CEO s currently in progress. Then ask yourselves, why were these guys ever paid so much?
First of all, what is a CEO? CEO stands for Chief Economic Officer. He (or she in some cases, but not many) is the person in charge of the overall economic positioning of a company. You can usually tell the CEO of a major company because he wears dark suits, has a worried expression and is totally incapable of using even the simplest office machinery. They are entrusted with making decisions that can effect the lives of hundreds, perhaps thousands of employees and shareholders, but the copy machine is a mystery that they will never solve. And the fax machine? Fuhgedaboutit. For mundane tasks like making a copy or sending a fax, they need a highly paid executive assistant.
CEO s are well-respected and well-paid. JPMorgan Chase & Co.recently announced that it paid Chairman and Chief Executive William Harrison $16 million for 2004, 20 percent less than he earned in 2003. See http://chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?id=15655. Twenty percent less. How will he ever live?
Their offices tend to be large and opulently furnished. The typical executive washroom could house a family of 11 from a third-world country. We know this because, prior to taking possession, they typically force such a family to live there, then throw them out into the streets. Its a kind of ISO 2001 standards thing.
Well, one might ask, aren't so highly qualified and brilliant men worth every penny that we can squander, I mean bestow, upon them? Lets look at the qualifications....and that brings us to the trial records.
Bernie Ebbers was the CEO of WorldCom and now faces charges. Bernie, it seems, accidently misplaced $11 billion. Oopsies! Bernie had a plan to recover the money. First of all, he noticed that at WorldCom HQ, there were more coffee filters than there was coffee. Obviously this meant that employees were taking coffee home! Can't you just hear the voice of Humphrey Bogart as Captain Queeg in the Caine Mutiny talking about the strawberries? Now $11 billion of coffee is a LOT of coffee. So, what was Bernie's plan? Hah! He replaced the water in the water coolers with TAP WATER! That'll learn them! See http://accounting.smartpros.com/x46857.xml
Okay, you think that I am making this up. See http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1338285/posts for the coffee story and the water cooler incident. Now, how could a man like this run one of America's largest corporations? I mean, he had to be qualified right? Here's how Bernie describes his qualifications, "To this day, I don't know technology, I don't know finance and accounting."
What he did know was that he needed an accountant with the "right" perspective, a real "team player." He found Scott Sullivan, an accountant with a slight substance abuse problem. Scott used to smoke a little "chronic," snort a little flake. Then he knew that the answer to any question that Bernie might ask was "How much do you want it to be?"
Then we Dennis Kozlowski, who allegedly stole $600 million while CEO of Tyco. What cracks me up is the denials from top brass that they knew of two loans totalling $32 million to Dennis that were "forgiven." Imagine having so much money that it takes you years to notice a missing $32 million! Must have just missplaced it.
Forbes Magazine, not exactly a communist journal, posed this question: "How did this plumb, bald, graceless red-faced working-class accountant become the head of one of America's largest industrial conglomerates?" Uh, guys? Dennis Kozlowski is every bit as charasmatic as most of America's business leaders. We don't choose them on looks, we chose them on.....well, I'll be damned if I know how we choose them.
When Dennis gave his wife Karen a birthday bash, no expense was to be spared. After all,the shareholders were paying for it. So the party featured waitresses in togas and models dressed as Roman gladiators, and a flaming "Happy Birthday, Karen," laser light show. Jimmy Buffett, a favorite of bald, graceless accountants on vacation, was paid $250,000 to play a set. But the peice de resistance was an ice-sculpture copy of Michelangelo's "David" pouring vodka from its penis. Sorry, it must be by working-class roots, but I'm not drinking anything that comes out of a penis. See http://www.forbes.com/2003/10/29/cx_da_1029topnews.htmlfor the description.
The thing is that Bernie and Dennis are not the worst of the litter. Have you ever seen Ken Lay of Enron? Or Walter Forbes from Cendant? Forbes testified that he worked on "the strategy vision part, talking to key clients" right up to the day when Cendant shareholders lost $14 billion in one day. Forbes is credited with pioneering the "dumb CEO defense" although he never explained how a dummy like him knew enough to sell off $11 million in his personal stock holdings BEFORE the bottom fell out. Dumb luck, I guess. See http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1105968924321
Now you do realize that none of these CEO s has gone to jail, right? Ebbers is still in trial, Kozlowski and Forbes are facing retrials after initial mistrials. Ken Lay surrendered on July 12th, 2004 and was released on $50,000 bail. Luckily, he happened to have the money.