Ever heard of Dick Fuld?

Ok, it’s starting to get a little ridiculous now. What the heck is going on with the economy? It’s bad enough that we have skyrocketing gas prices driving inflation, now we have businesses failing left and right, the latest being Lehman Brothers, a company that’s been around for over 150 years.

What does it take to run a business into the ground that’s been around since 1850 and survived the stock market crash and the great depression?

Well, it seems all it took was the reckless leadership of one Richard Severin Fuld, Jr. who ran the company for the last 14 years. Gee, there’s something that won’t look to good on his resume, huh? He took a 158 year old company and left it in ruins after a mere 14 years. What an accomplishment.

His efforts didn’t go unrewarded though. He drew a pay package of around $466 MILLION from 1993 – 2007. He also stands to draw around $60 million from the company now for his “retirement”. I understand he has been selling off his company stock over the course of 2008 all the while encouraging his employees to invest heavily. Can you say “insider trading”?

Anybody see a pattern here? The CEO and upper management bail out with their golden parachutes and they leave the stockholders and employees whistling in the wind.

Capitalism at it’s worst. Companies that are being run by people who have no regard for anybody or anything that gets in the way of profit. That means sound business theory goes right out the window and the company gets run by the “shooting craps in Vegas” theory.

Nice job DICK.

Hey, I wonder if I could get a job like that. I bet I could do just as good a job running a venerable company into the ground in a handful of years. Anybody want to pay me $466 million?