WASHINGTON, Jan. 22 (UPI) -- If Moses, after spending 40 days and nights with the Almighty, had come down from Mount Sinai today bearing two tablets with the Ten Commandments, he would have been hard pressed to find a publisher.
Beginning in the raunchy, anything-goes 1960s, the Ten Commandments quickly became multiple choice. Coveting something that belongs to another is now de rigueur. "Filthy Lucre for Dummies" would be a good title to chronicle the repeal of the 8th (thou shall not steal) and 10th (thou shall not covet thy neighbor's anything) commandments when Communism was consigned to history's oubliette.
Robert Kiyosaki's "Retire Young Retire Rich" is now must reading for aspirant billionaires. It took Rockefeller 16 years to become a billionaire in his time. Bill Gates did it in ten. Mike Dell in five. And Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page became multi-billionaires in their late 20s.
The collective worth of the world's 700-odd billionaires is now bumping $3 trillion. Their numbers grow by over 100 new big ones a year. Some 50 countries now have them, including Kazakhstan and Iceland. In China, where the rule of business law is as ephemeral in the wild east as it once was in the wild west (as long as you keep your nose out of politics), there are already 30 billionaires.
Some make their billions so fast, one new member came in at $5 billion, another at $9 billion, all racked up in a year. Bill Gates still leads the pack with almost $50 billion (and has pledged $30 billion alongside 2nd wealthiest Warren Buffett's $31 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to reduce poverty, disease and premature death in the developing world).
In the mine-is-bigger-than-yours mega-yacht race, Russian oil tycoon Roman Abramovich, 40, the world's 11th richest billionaire at $18.2 billion, is in the lead with a $330 million, 525-footer -- the 40 knot "Eclipse" -- that has a crew of 40, 22 staterooms, a swimming pool, two helipads, a private submarine, and bullet-proof glass. Annual running costs: $20 million, including $120,000 to refuel. He owns three other giant boats in the plus 300-foot class for his friends to tag along and recently gave a 370-footer to a friend.
The dizzying climb of the entrepreneurs has led some corporate CEOs to believe they can crash the club by leveraging gluttonous severance packages -- e.g., Home Depot's Robert Nardelli dumped by his board with a $210 million golden handshake. The Economist, in this week's cover story on executive pay and the "glory days of global capitalism," says the executive movers and shakers about to meet at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland have enjoyed a "Beckhamesque bonanza."
Goldman Sachs' golden touch delivered $16.5 billion in year-end bonuses, up 40 percent in a year, or $623,418 for every employee. But that wasn't the way it was divvied among the 26,467-strong work force. Some star traders made $100 million as their reward for boosting Goldman's stock 61 percent in 2006.
Winston Churchill once said socialism is the equal sharing of miseries whereas capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. That it could be this unequal was unimaginable in the immediate post-World War II era when wealthy Brits were supertaxed at 90 percent of their annual income.
A day of reckoning is now coming on both sides of the Atlantic. Since 2001, says The Economist survey, the pay of the typical American worker has been stuck, with real wages growing less than half as fast as productivity, while a typical top U.S. manager has seen his take home increase from 40 times the average 4 decades ago to 110 times today. Overall compensation deals for CEOs frequently reach a multiple of 500 times the factory floor rate. Thus, a worker earns in a year roughly what the CEO on the top floor takes home each day.
Over the past 25 years, CEO compensation has increased 600 percent. Several CEOs were paid in excess of $100 million in 2006. One hedge fund superstar made a cool $1 billion. The pack of 25 top hedge wunderkinds averaged $130 million -- in a year. Top traders clocked in at $40 to $50 million while senior investment bankers had to settle for $20 to $25 million bonuses. Ten million dollars doesn't get you a decent apartment in midtown Manhattan. They range from $20 million to $40 million; single family houses from $20 million to $100 million.
While the world's most prestigious magazine said "greedy chief executives, abetted by weak sycophantic boards," were not to blame, the ingredients for labor unrest and a liberal comeback are in place. After winning back the Congress, Democrats lost no time hiking the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour from the $5.15 where it hadn't moved in a decade.
The culprit over the past 15 years, according to The Economist, was too many share options to too many people on terms that were too generous, along with "foolish accounting and tax policies supercharged with bull-market mania."
The globalization of jobs that now go to China and India is only part of the problem. Fungible technology is automating tasks once done by humans.
In the race to riches, companies came up with a scheme that awarded stock options to executives that were backdated to their highest price -- the equivalent of betting on the winning horse after the race is over. Some 120 companies are under investigation for giving their executives surefire backdated options. Home Depot had been doing this for the past 20 years.
The 100 largest corporations have replaced 56 CEOs in the past five years. The much-sought corporate directorships are no longer free rides with fat emoluments; audit committee members will have to spend some 300 hours with company spreadsheets.
There isn't a day without some financial skullduggery in the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal, two newspapers that are distributed in some 200 countries and territories. There are also stories that tug at the heartstrings. Home Depot's turfed out Nardelli with the $210 million severance package said he was now willing to give up a major perk: his personal use of the company's six corporate jets.
