{"id":938,"date":"2007-05-19T11:28:18","date_gmt":"2007-05-19T16:28:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2007\/05\/that-giant-sucking-sound-from-the-newspaper\/"},"modified":"2007-05-19T11:28:19","modified_gmt":"2007-05-19T16:28:19","slug":"that-giant-sucking-sound-from-the-newspaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2007\/05\/that-giant-sucking-sound-from-the-newspaper\/","title":{"rendered":"That Giant Sucking Sound From The Newspaper"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Pioneer Press offers up an utterly worthless piece of agenda journalism regarding CEO pay.&nbsp; At the risk of <a href=\"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2007\/04\/compensation-limitations\/\" target=\"_blank\">upsetting the Red Bird<\/a>, I have pulled some quotes from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.twincities.com\/ci_5930595?source=rss\" target=\"_blank\">You&#8217;re fired! Take these millions and go<\/a>&nbsp;(all my emphasis):<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>If 3M ever fires George Buckley, <strong>one of Minnesota&#8217;s highest-paid CEOs<\/strong>, there is one detail Buckley won&#8217;t have to sweat: health insurance. <\/p>\n<p>The Maplewood-based manufacturer will <strong>kindly pick up much of the tab<\/strong> for Buckley&#8217;s health care for two years as part of <strong>the $38 million goodbye<\/strong> he&#8217;ll get on the way out the door. (<em>ed. &#8211; we learn later in the article that this &#8220;supersized pay&#8221; health care equals $28,430<\/em>) <\/p>\n<p>Buckley&#8217;s potential exit payout, with its health-insurance perk, is just one of hundreds of <strong>potential multimillion-dollar termination treasures<\/strong> detailed to the dollar for the first time in this spring&#8217;s <strong>revealing<\/strong> crop of corporate proxy statements. <\/p>\n<p>Expect some <strong>&#8220;holy cow!&#8221; moments to rattle a few company boards<\/strong>. The numbers are expected to <strong>stoke<\/strong> <strong>activism to stop rewarding poor performance with supersized exit pay<\/strong>. (<em>ed. &#8211; I think this writer is attempting to stoke&nbsp;it herself&nbsp;since she does not provide a single shred of evidence revealing &#8220;poor performance&#8221; amongst her CEO examples.<\/em>) <\/p>\n<p>Still, they are a keen reminder of just how <strong>CEO&#8217;s aren&#8217;t like the rest of us<\/strong>. <\/p>\n<p>Hodgson said he thinks <strong>one year&#8217;s salary plus bonus &#8220;is quite sufficient&#8221;<\/strong> for severance to play its role as a &#8220;small insurance policy.&#8221;&nbsp; (<em>ed. &#8211; how about letting the market determine what &#8220;is quite sufficient?&#8221;<\/em>)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>I realize newspapers are disintegrating right before our eyes so apparently editors are absent.&nbsp; How else do you explain this intern-level business writing making it to print? <\/p>\n<p>This article &#8220;reveals&#8221; pay packages for 9 other local CEOs.&nbsp; The spin is simple &#8211; the writer&#8217;s focus is on their health benefits that are miniscule compared to the overall comp package.&nbsp; I suspect her goal is to anger the &#8220;common laborers&#8221; who are&nbsp;paying for&nbsp;ever-increasing healthcare insurance. <\/p>\n<p>The writer does not make a single reference to overall stock performance during any of the CEO&#8217;s tenures.&nbsp; Completely pathetic, in my opinion.&nbsp;&nbsp;Overall corporate performance and shareholder value&nbsp;must be included to provide the proper context to this discussion. <\/p>\n<p>Ours is a free-market economy that self-corrects over time if something is misaligned.&nbsp; I would argue&nbsp;that these <a href=\"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2007\/04\/why-executive-salary-caps-dont-work\/\" target=\"_blank\">CEO compensations are generally not misaligned<\/a>.&nbsp; Price and wage controls stifle freedom, inject government control where it&nbsp;should not be&nbsp;and ultimately can lead to totalitarianism. <\/p>\n<p>See Hugo Chavez.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Pioneer Press offers up an utterly worthless piece of agenda journalism regarding CEO pay.&nbsp; At the risk of upsetting the Red Bird, I have pulled some quotes from You&#8217;re fired! Take these millions and go&nbsp;(all my emphasis): If 3M ever fires George Buckley, one of Minnesota&#8217;s highest-paid CEOs, there is one detail Buckley won&#8217;t have to sweat: health insurance. The Maplewood-based manufacturer will kindly pick up much of the tab for Buckley&#8217;s health care for two years as part of the $38 million goodbye he&#8217;ll get on the way out the door. (ed. &#8211; we learn later in the article that this &#8220;supersized pay&#8221; health care equals $28,430) Buckley&#8217;s&hellip; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2007\/05\/that-giant-sucking-sound-from-the-newspaper\/\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"","bgseo_robots_follow":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[20,5],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5Oho-f8","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/938"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/938\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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