When Pink Becomes Green

So you do know that, while big corporations received bailouts amid reports of potential economic calamity, many are strongly in the black now? Yes, many of the companies that would have been headed to bankruptcy court, if not for enforced-taxpayer assistance, are doing quite fine now, thank you. Yet, with all this supposed good news, why is it that few of them are hiring workers?

As a report on CNN.com tells it, pink slips for some mean wads of green for others!

According to the report "CEO Pay and the Great Recession," chief executive officers of the 50 firms that laid off the most workers since the start of the economic crisis earned nearly $12 million on average in 2009. That's 42 percent more than the average pay of CEOs at S&P 500 firms as a whole.

"I think that really shows a really perverse incentive system in this country," said Sarah Anderson, lead author of the Institute for Policy Studies' 17th Annual Executive Compensation Survey. "You are handsomely rewarded for slashing jobs in the middle of the worst economic crisis in 80 years," she said.

It did for Fred Hassan of Schering-Plough, the man the report dubbed last year's "Golden Parachuter." Hassan was the highest paid layoff leader, earning $50 million in 2009 while his firm merged with Merck and cut 16,000 workers.

According to Anderson, "they're prioritizing CEO pay at the welfare of their workers"...

You see, whether shedding workers employed or not hiring them to begin with, it turns out there is a golden lining -- less expense for the head honchos which means more money to pad their wallets, at least, in the short-term (and you do know that the short-term is ALL THAT MATTERS).

If the conservative agenda is brought back by voters in November, it will mean even LESS government oversight than now (though that's not saying much). Limited government will come to mean more and more unlimited profits for the few!