Around this time last year America was bracing for a nasty economic slide which the media constantly described as a “credit crunch.”  The crunch, we were told, was the result of banks having lent too much money to people who had bad jobs, or no jobs, and accordingly, were refusing to lend money to anyone.  We were told that this was going to be a huge problem for “Main Street as well as Wall Street”, because politicians thought it would be better to be patronizing than honest, and because Capital Hill does anything Wall Street tells it to do.

While there were a lot of fundamental problems with the economy, the main fundamental problem was that everyone thought they were going to get rich by buying houses.  This seemed like a good idea when everyone's neighbors were buying new cars and “flipping” condos, but throughout all of history, the only way to catapult economic brackets through the purchase of a home was to buy a house on an oil stash, or buy a house on top of asbestos, preferably placed there by a well-heeled corporation, but even I wouldn't trade poverty for wealth and Mesothelioma.

Another problem in the economy was the use of Credit Default Swaps, which were glorified bookmaking on the part of white shoe investment banks full of people who had convinced themselves, and one another, that they were smarter than everyone else.  A CDS trade exists when one company offers to give a stack of dimes to another company in exchange for that company promising to disembowel itself if a third company happens to default on its loans.  This would seem like a horrible trade to John Daly, or anyone who has never been to Ivy League school, but fortunately, the people at the banks did go to Ivy League school, which meant they knew the government would end up paying for the disembowelment before it caused the unthinkable disaster of causing those on Main Street to have to save a few dollars before buying more beanie babies, or a new Camaro. 

Whenever something like this happens, Americans start asking questions about why the pricks, such as Angelo Mozilo from Countrywide, who head the institutions responsible for most the carnage manage to walk off with eight and nine figure bonuses while destroying shareholder value.  Usually, the questions result in a few “who's who of bozos who make the most for the worst performance” articles, but they rarely result in anyone losing a job and regrettably, never result in anyone being stoned in public.  The simple reason for this is that America is more like Columbia than Canada and the permanent underclass is so busy watching television and going to Olive Garden that it allows the Ruling class to pillage as long as those bowls of salad keep coming.

The more nuanced reason for the apathy toward extreme wealth and corporate crime, however, is that this is America, where everyone is about to get rich.  Just take an informal poll around a college campus or among the workers on the floor of a Best Buy and you won't find an unsuccessful person in the bunch.  Regardless of the fact that the data would suggest that virtually nobody will be rich, or even better off than their parents basically everyone you ask is only a few years away from being very wealthy and they hope the rules are just as liberal for them when they are the ones who don’t want to pay taxes or pay a decent wage. It's true you may find an occasional kid who is more concerned with helping the world than getting paid, but usually those kids have trust funds, or haven't tried paying rent on their own.

A more technical reason for obscene executive compensation is the fact that companies, and issues of executive compensation, are controlled by boards or directors whose members are the CEO's neighbors in the Hamptons.  Even if Joe Shareholder looked up from his salad long enough to get angry that the CEO of company X made 100 million dollars while destroying the company, the people who sit on the board of the company will probably agree that the executive needs the money to encourage future stellar performance, and to buy a house in Telluride. 

Joe and the rest of the shareholders could technically vote to throw out the back scratching jerks who approve the pay package but since politicians thought fixed benefit retirement plans were too passé , Joe's vote, and the votes of the millions of other shit-broke nobodies are held by institutions who manage their 401K, and who, for a  handsome fee, combine them into one, unified voice, entrusted to some nouveau riche jerkoff with a house on Nantucket who uses the voice to say something like   “whatever you want Mr. Mozilo, want to come to my lobster bake next weekend?”