Almost a third of CEOs expect to cut jobs

[Pale Blue Dot]

Source: MSNBC

WASHINGTON - Nearly one-third of America's top executives expect to cut payrolls in the coming months, reflecting fallout from the housing bust as well as soaring energy prices.

At the same time, a survey by the Business Roundtable, released Wednesday, showed that most executives expect sales and capital investment to remain at current levels or even improve over the next six months.

That is consistent with expectations from the Federal Reserve and other economists who say they think the fragile economy will strengthen later this year and into next year — even as the U.S. unemployment rate, a lagging indicator of business health, rises. As in the past, many employers won't want to ramp up hiring until they are sure the economy is really back on a firm footing.

Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25245665/

[SpiralHawk]

1. The putrid fruit of 'conservative' republiconomics

[saigon68]

14. Cut costs---please the stockholders

</disgust>

[Sherman A1]

2. The cut they might consider

would be their own paychecks.

[OhioChick]

4. That was my first thought.

Greedy bastards.

[AndyTiedye]

9. The CEO at My Employer Actually Did That

When they did layoffs back in 2002, the CEO reduced his own salary to $1 for that year.

[primavera]

11. Do you know if it was more than a token gesture?

Just curious, but I know that, oftentimes, the formal salary of CEOs is but a miniscule portion of their overall compensation, which may include tens of millions in bonuses and stock options each year. If the CEO at your employer actually shared the pain of the people he was laying off, I suppose that's commendable, although I admit I'm prejudiced enough against CEOs to speculate that he had enough wealth already accumulated that he probably didn't actually have to live on $1 that year. Regardless, that certainly isn't the norm for US CEOs, who typically give themselves massive bonuses and pay increases whenever they lay off workers. It always cracks me up to hear free market proponents talk about how the free market encourages and rewards efficiency. Yeah right. The majority of the highest paid CEOs in the country have overseen their companies losing profits and laying off workers, yet have been rewarded with eight and even nine figure bonuses for the fuck-ups. And people worry about government inefficiency? Give me a break. At least government bureaucrats don't give themselves $100 million bonuses for screwing up.

[AndyTiedye]

15. I'd Say Most Stock Options Were Under Water at That Point…

[Peace Patriot]

16. "At least gov't bureaucrats don't give themselves $100 million bonuses for screwing up."

Ahem, Dick Cheney gets millions in "bonuses" from his Halliburton "golden parachute"--Halliburton, which was going under when he left, and now has ungodly "profits" from OUR pocketbooks! For screwing up. For screwing up in Iraq; for screwing up in New Orleans; for screwing over the U.S. military. For looting. For lying. For overcharging.

And, given the unprecedented secrecy around Bushite budget and private contracting matters--especially military and intel contracts (70% of the latter funds now in PRIVATE corporate coffers, according to Thom Hartman, the other day)--and, given all the other dire indications (a billion missing here, a billion missing there)--we really don't know what kind of "bonuses" these war criminals and master thieves are arranging for themselves, through various means (outright theft, funneling money to offshore accounts, phony contracts, investments, future employment, current or future kickbacks, etc.). Washington DC has become a cauldron of corruption these last eight years. It was pretty filthy before that, but the Bushites have destroyed ALL accountability, oversight and restraint. It has been one massive looting expedition without parallel in history.

In fact, Bushites regard our government in exactly the same way that CEOs, boards of directors and big investors view businesses--not as contributing to the common good, not as employers, and not as the drivers of innovation and progress, but as entities TO LOOT, to make the super-rich richer--at the expense of the company itself, at the expense of its products and employees, and at the expense of society. And the more they can speculate on production--and squeeze workers, and fire workers, and loot their pension funds, and off-shore jobs, and cut corners, and evade product safety and worker safety and other laws--the better for the super-rich, because they don't give a fuck about anybody any more.

That is the corporate/Bushite ethos: to not give a fuck about anything or anybody. Capitalism gone absolutely, stark-raving mad.

The Bush Junta views the federal government the same way--an entity to loot and destroy.

[primavera]

18. Well, okay, so government aren't SUPPOSED to give themselves bonuses

At least it's a criminal behavior for government. Corporations can be openly corrupt and get awards for it.

[OhioChick]

13. Steve Jobs, I Presume? n/t

[underpants]

3. OH NO!! What are we going to do without all those CEO's?!?!??!?!

Oh ....never mind

[MiniMandaRuth]

5. from what to what.

I am sure the second what will be just fine for the old guys.

[diane in sf]

6. Really, firing one of these greedholes would pay the salary for 20-100 middle class jobs.

[primavera]

8. Oh, a great many more than 20-100

In 2004, CEOs in the US earned, on average, 419 times as much as the average employee salary in the companies they ran. That was four years ago and the trend has been rising steadily. By some estimates, that multiplier may now be as high as 600 times the average salary. And, if you look just at the highest paid CEOs, the ten highest paid CEOs in the country "earned" (pardon me while I choke) half a billion dollars last year between the ten of them. That means that those ten salaries alone equate to the combined salaries of 20,000 people earning the national average of $25K a year.

Oh, and, by way of contrast, CEOs in Europe, which, I would point out to free market proponents are also capitalist economies, earn on average between 10 and 20 times the average salaries of the workers in their companies. Even that is considered a bit excessive there. I tremble to think what Europeans must think of our feudal levels of income inequality.

[shraby]

7. When and where does the point come that there

are too many CEO's for the number of employees they manage?

[Doctor Cynic]

10. Oh. I thought they were planning to quit.

[primavera]

12. Nah, that would defeat the whole point

Not much point in firing personnel in a profitable business unless you're there to collect all of their salaries in the form of increased pay and bonuses for yourself, now is there?

[Canuckistanian]

17. "CEOs expect salary cuts" - That's what I'd like to see

But it won't happen, will it?

Of course not, they'll continue to get their salaries, stock options, bonuses, retirement funds and "parachute deals".

REGARDLESS of their company's stock performance or financial health.

Like Mike says, "when the lights go out".....

[some guy]

19. CEOs expect to cut jobs

and expect sales to remain the same? :silly:

Well, I suppose unemployed people do have more time to shop. :eyes: