I saw this in the Thursday 10/21/08 edition of The Wall St. Journal - it is a letter to the editor written by a Vern Mastel of Bismark, ND. "Let's get this right. In exchange for their experience and skills, Wall St. CEOs and managers are paid millions, tens of millions, and in several cases, hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation ("Lower Salaries Could Cost Wall Street," Money & Investing, Oct. 15). What leadership? What expertise? How could lower-priced leadership be any worse for Wall Street?"
"Under their leadership the stock prices prices of the major Wall St. firms have fallen by 40% to 80% in the past several years; they paid top dollar for truckloads of worthless debt paper; their companies created obtuse, impenetrable financial instruments called Structured Investment Vehicles and Collateralized Debt Obligations that they cannot explain to each other, much less the financial world at large; and they eagerly loaned massive amounts of money to anyone with a pulse."
"These guys aren't leaders, they aren't qualified to be CEO's and they haven't earned the money they've received. I submit that, if required to do so, these guys couldn't lead a Boy Scout troop out of a brightly lit, unlocked room."
The "mini" copy of the front page of the Journal is from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wall_Street_Journal
