With all the economic bombs being dropped as of late, I can't help but wonder what kinds of checks and balances could keep this crap from happening. Congress has legislation in front of it to increase the penalties for CEO's, CFO's etc. of PUBLICLY held companies who lie about the bottom line. This is all well and good, but its not enough. How about making these guys liable to the stockholders for those losses? For that matter, instead of a single count of fraud being brought up, how about a count for every 100 shareholders? As an example, X Inc. has 23,000 individual shareholders. If the CEO signs off on cooked books, he potentially faces 230 counts of fraud, each bearing a potential 10 year sentence. Thats what I call a deterrent. Same rule should apply to the accountants too. After all, they ARE the keepers of the books.

And what about the SEC? Our 'watchdogs' appear to be taking a nap here. If we are going to give them a larger set of regulatory powers, then lets sprinkle a little liability in their direction too. The threat of a lost pension or a little jail time should work wonders on the buearucratic mentality. If your job is to regulate, then get off your duff and do your job. If you don't you could lose your fat little pension or worse. Seems like a fair incentive to me.

Now comes the part I figure you guys are really gonna hate...corporate salaries. Lets face it....some of these CEO's are making an obscene amount of money. Given that it's a PUBLICLY traded company, there really ought to be some limitations here. A CEO should not be allowed to earn a salary that is greater than 25 times that of the lowest paid full-time employee. As an example, the janitor at X Inc. earns $20,000 a year. That means the CEO can make $500,000 a year. Limit his bonuses to 2.5 times his annual salary and he can still rake in almost 2 mill a year. I don't know about you guys, but in my opinion if you can't make it on 1.75 mill a year, you got problems. As a shareholder myself, I don't relish the thought of paying someone such a HUGE salary because thats money that comes out of my dividends, it devalues MY shares. Add to that the fact that executive salaries are tied to the salaries of others withing the company, giving incentive for a more equeatible pay scale, and it seems that everyone benefits (except the CEO) from a 'balanced' system.

Look, I know whats above isn't perfect, and Lord knows I HATE over-regulation, but I hate to see shareholders and hard working folks like ourselves getting 'fleeced' even worse. So everybody give me a piece of your mind in trade for the piece of mine you just got...I want to know how you feel about corporate salaries and the situation our ecomomy is in. I just hope and pray I don't get banned for this one.

Live long and prosper!!