Naj, sorry dude, you're ****ing stupid. Read the thread, use your brain, then come back.

Arturius, sorry you're a ****ing moron and/or downie. I read it on his blog when it occurred. I am sorry you are too ******ed to understand my reply and why it's relevant. But you 'believe' it and Cuban says so, so it must be true ZOMG!!11!

I prefer to pay the CEOs of the firms I own a lot of money. Why? Because they are the best at what they do. Steve Wynn, Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankfein, etc, etc. I prefer to have pay for performance. I prefer to have leaner, lower-cost firms that generate higher returns for me. If you want to own the lower-margin firms, go have fun.

Much of the opinions in this thread are utter nonsense - like those saying CEOs would work for 5% of their current pay. They wouldn't work where they are - they'd go private like tons of mgmt talent has and work for PE/VC firms. List too endless to even give examples. Talk to Bill Janetschek or Perry Golkin to discuss how easy it is to get CEOs out of the public arena now.

I invest billions of dollars [in public and private firms] and am quite familiar with ALL of the ins and outs of this discussion for quite some time now.

So, STFU n00b.

The 'legitimate pyramid scheme' is also incredibly lol. So tired and trite and stupid and unthinking.

And I vote for, and will continue to vote for higher pay packages for good mgmt talent whenever and wherever I can.

Sigh. Why don't people read threads? I have no problems with CEO compensation, I have problems with CEO's diluting shareholder positions and making up bull**** about companies and are allowed to do so because they have a tacit agreement with mutual funds who essentially are the only ones who can decide who sits on boards.

This is not a universal problem, however, there is a trend developing and it might end in pain, and probably not to the people who set up this scheme.

Your strawman of saying I'm anti CEO-pay is brilliant, by the way. So easy to knock people who suggest maybe the system has a fault, just accuse them of being anti-high fliers and explain ECON101 of the free market!

Oh yeah, funds are becoming a legitimate pyramid scheme. No longer are they investing for value but they're now just trying to position themselves in the same way every other fund does, hyper indexation. They then promote 10% long term returns (of course, they throw in the disclaimer there could be a draw down), and insist you park all of your money within their funds, investing and forgetting until retirement. This scheme, in order to add value to the shares, relies on future investors also adding to the pot, enough to not only guarantee the money that will be taken out later, but also to add to the returns of the initial investors.

This, my friend, resembles a pyramid scheme, just like social security resembles a pyramid scheme. If you had actually read my post, you would have realised I don't think this is an evil thing, or a bad thing for the investor, however it does lend itself for exploitation by those who control the game. I'm also fearful of a black swan event disrupting the balance, but I'm yet to think of scenario where this system will fail, baring a societal collapse.

You come in late, get everything wrong, and don't even respond to what you could have learned from.

It wasn't until 1993 that large shareholders could legally talk to other shareholders without spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to file proxies.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...pagewanted=all

And no shareholder has the right to pick comp committee members or any directors. Shareholders only have a Soviet Union style system that allows them to vote for only who THE BOARD ALLOWS THEM TO.

Barrett took over intel in 1998. When he left, the company was worth roughly the same after a wild ride. He squandered untold billions on silly acquisitions at the height of the stock market bubble. The capital expenditures you are talking about would have been made by any CEO. Increasing manufacturing capabilities is a necessary part of the business and if it wasn't going to work, the company would fail anyway. Anyone on this message board could have run intel as deftly as Barrett. His stock market performance just confirms DC's position that CEOs try very hard to run up short term value increasing the variance at the expense of long term growth.

Otellini took over and quickly changed the company's internal structure to a "platform" based approach. All these platforms have failed except for the ones which were successful before the switch. The market is cyclical however and the jury is still out on how well he has handled the company.

In their defense, the market drives intel shares more than any CEO could hope. They have a virtual monopoly and make money when businesses are spending amply on tech. However, this just gives more support to the idea that someone making $1-2mil/yr could do the same job. Since the early 90s intel hasn't really made any money outside of processors (their monopoly business). From a shareholder perspective, it would be nice if a CEO would come in and streamline the company down to that operation, and just collect the cash.