Excessive Corporate Executive Pay: Pigs Do Fly

Corporate executives have finally proven that pigs can fly. Well almost, they need multi-million dollar airplanes to pull it off. Yesterday Home Depot's CEO Robert Nardelli soared into the stratosphere with his $ 210 million severence package. That's on top of the $ 64 million in salary that he received these past 6 years while HD's stock was grounded.

He's the latest example of legal theivery. Stealing is defined as taking something that does not rightfully belong to you. Nardelli may have followed HD's corporate by-laws in setting up the pay package. But the size of the transfer of wealth from shareholders to management is equal to stealing valuable company assets. And no corporate by-laws condone or should codify stealing significant company assets.

Stockholders are the owners of the companies. They must have control over salaries of employees. Nardelli's self-dealing amounts to larceny.