<RANT>
The only solution to the compensation issue is for the Board of Directors to refuse to compensate CEO's at those levels. Of course, its awfully hard to get them to do that when all of the CEO's are on each other's BoD's. You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. University Presidents are doing the same thing right now. One ups their pay so the others convince the boards to up their own to "retain talent." Its an unending spiral (well except for bankruptcy, but that doesn't seem to affect the airlines). Generally, I'm against government intervention in business affairs, I think its bad for capitalism. I think we may be seeing a time where we require some regulation as to the compensation of publicly held executives.

My biggest beef is that the money that is being raked in is not reinvested in the US economy right now. A publicly held company must grow to remain viable. I also feel that being publicly held gives the company an obligation to benefit the national economy. If you want to just pocket the cash, you should stay privately held.

If all of that money ends up in the hands of individual CEO's and not the public market, sooner or later the American consumer will have no spending power left. It does us(the US economy) no good if the people can't buy things. We need an incentive to get those funds back into our economy instead of foreign investments and the wallets of the top 1%.</RANT>