America’s corporate and financial elite has returned to the feeding trough and is collecting huge salaries and bonuses while tens of millions of workers in the US continue to face levels of social misery not seen since the Great Depression.
Annual bonuses rose by 11 percent for executives at the 450 largest US corporations last fiscal year, according to a new survey published by the Wall Street Journal. Overall, median compensation—including salaries, bonuses, stocks, options and other incentives—rose by three percent to $7.3 million in 2009.
The increased payouts were the result of soaring profits at top companies, which doubled from a year earlier, leading to a 29 percent increase in total shareholder returns. This, in turn, was the direct result of the offensive that corporate America has waged against the working class, with the full backing of the Obama administration and both big business parties. Over the course of the last two years companies have slashed payrolls, wages and benefits, replaced full-time workers with temporary and casual workers earning poverty level wages and ratcheted up productivity.
“Cost-cutting” and “streamlining” were the principal pursuits of all the CEOs pocketing large pay packages last year. The top five were: (1) Gregory B. Maffei of Liberty Media Corp., who got $87.1 million in compensation last year, four times his 2008 package; (2) Larry Ellison, Oracle’s billionaire founder, who received $68.6 million; (3) Ray R. Irani of Occidental Petroleum Corp., who got $52.2 million; (4) Yahoo’s Carol Bartz, who took in $44.6 million; and (5) Leslie Moonves from CBS, who got $39 million.
With the S&P 500 Index up 7.5 percent so far this year, top executives are expected to see even bigger compensation packages in 2010. “Many companies are beating earnings expectations, stock prices are up and performance is good, so bonuses will be good,” Mark Reilly, a partner with the Chicago-based Compensation Consulting Consortium LLC, told the Journal.
The payouts to the heads of media, energy and Internet firms pale in comparison, however, to the grotesques sums hedge fund managers and private equity traders will be paid when Wall Street issues its year-end bonuses. According to a survey cited in the New York Times, overall compensation in “financial services” will rise 5 percent in 2010, with employees in some businesses, like asset management, getting increases of 15 percent. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase have reportedly set aside $89.54 billion for year-end bonuses.
via www.wsws.org
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