A Sack With a Dollar Sign

In cash alone, [Sanford] Weill, who turned 71 yesterday, earned $30 million, or about $111,000 for every day before he stepped down as chief executive [of Citigroup] on Oct. 1, while remaining the company's chairman. ... Last October, he sold 5.57 million shares back to the company for $262.4 million. He also realized $23 million from exercising options, the proxy shows.

It's not just that Sandy's earning more money than anyone in this country except Mel Gibson and George Bush. The really bothersome bit is that Sandy isn't very good at his job. Last year, Citigroup was hit with $400 million in fines for "conflict of interest," which is code for screwing over your customers. Then Sandy had to withdraw his application to be a director of the NYSE after someone pointed out that his company had just been fined four hundred mil for screwing over it's customers and maybe he shouldn't be in charge of keeping companies on the NYSE ethical.

Greg Easterbrook does a good job tearing into how overpaid Sandy and other CEO's are. But look closely at those numbers. The majority of Sandy's money comes from stock options. That makes Sanford Weill a bona fide member of "the Investment Class." Bush economic policy revolves around tax cuts for precisely this class, counting on them to create more jobs by creating new businesses. But as he is already earning $400 million a year with his existing business, what incentive does Sandy have to go start a new firm and take such a high risk of failure?

Maybe he could hire some new maids or something. Trickle, trickle.