There's an article in the Wall Street Journal about cost cutting measures at General Motors, and some of the highlights include clocks that no longer work because the company stopped paying to replace the batteries, cheaper towels for clean up, and no air travel for employees without written approval from a manager.  Of course the article points to the kerfluffle over the CEO's flying in a private corporate jet to Washington to beg for a bailout from Congress, which points out the obvious: in corporate America cost cutting is for the working masses, not the C-level suite.

When my brother worked in a large, Fortune 500 company, he became highly disillusioned when he and the rest of the workforce were asked to accept salary freezes, no bonuses and the loss of small perks like free orange juice and then when the next quarterly reports were released they found that the C-level execs had gotten raises and bonuses and not one of the company's jets had been sold.

And just today there's a story about 10 senior Wachovia managers who are eligible to get $98 million in severance if the Wells Fargo deal is completed by December 31. So you screw the pooch and you walk away more than a little wealthier, while thousands who worked for you get to enter the Christmas season wondering if there will be pink slips in their stockings.  Nice.

I love capitalism, but when risk and reward are so obviously divorced in business's upper echelons something needs to seriously be changed.  I'm fine with executives being paid handsomely if they run a business well, as long as it's not at the expense of thousands of others' jobs, but I'm not fine with executives being paid handsomely in return for abject failure.  There's something seriously wrong with that picture.