I can’t believe this didn’t make any headlines in the US. I found this in an Australian newspaper!

US chief swims in millions as unemployed sink deeper

AT SOME point in the future, historians will look back at this era as the time when America basically lost its collective mind.

The latest example is Ted Kelly, the recently retired chief executive officer of Boston’s Liberty Mutual insurance company. Ask any official or business person across the state, and they’ll sing Ted Kelly’s praises: good guy, insanely smart, devoted to the common cause, all of that manifest in that Liberty Mutual grew at breakneck speed under his leadership and gave millions of dollars away.

There’s something else, though, that came out this week. Mr Kelly had an annual compensation package of $US50 million for the past four years. Yes, there’s a zero after the 5. That’s just shy of a million dollars a week, $192,000 per working day, $24,000 an hour. To run an insurance company.

It calls to mind an anecdote in an award-winning Washington Post series last year. A newly promoted chief executive of Dean Foods got a pay package in the 1970s equal to $US1 million in current dollars, plus a Cadillac. He moved from a three-bedroom house into a four and joined the local country club. He declined future raises because he thought it would be bad for company morale.

It’s not apparent that Mr Kelly had those same reservations. As a result, every Liberty Mutual policyholder, all those regular people making ends meet at kitchen tables, have paid for Mr Kelly to take $200 million out of the company, their company, over the past four years.

Every Massachusetts taxpayer is footing part of his salary, given that the state granted Kelly’s company a $46.5 million tax break for a new headquarters in Boston. The whole thing is grotesque.

This is not a screed against the rich. There are precious few people who don’t want to be part of that group. But there should be at least some rhyme or reason to who makes what. You’re an entrepreneur, inventor, someone who founded a business taking enormous risk, you deserve what the open market will pay.

This is sickening! Obscene!!

And:

This isn’t fair market value; it’s a rigged game: executives hurling bundles of money at each other, then using the raises as benchmarks. Is there a synonym here for grotesque?

Read the rest here.