Greed

How do you deal with something like this? Really, how do you stop a process where someone who destroyed his company, caused pain for thousands of employees and hundreds of thousands of homeowners, ends up with this kind of windfall?

Countrywide Financial Corp. founder Angelo Mozilo, one of the nation's highest-paid chief executives, stands to reap $115 million in severance-related pay if his troubled company is acquired by Bank of America Corp., regulatory filings show.

Free rides on the company jet are also included in Mozilo's departure deal, and the company will pick up his country club bills until 2011 [...]

"This is a failed chief executive -- a failed and overpaid chief executive -- who has driven his company to the brink of bankruptcy," said Daniel Pedrotty, director of the office of investment at the AFL-CIO. "I think shareholders are going to be especially outraged if he walks away with another pay-for-failure package."

But the idea that shareholders control the process is a myth. The board does what the board wants. And more than anything, this is what causes recession; the redistribution of wealth upwards means that ordinary consumer spending suffers due to a lack of resources. And yet so many of these corporations rely on that same consumer spending.

Government has mechanisms to deal with corporations that break the public trust. They apply for charters which are reviewed periodically. They have "personhood" status under the law which doesn't have to remain.

There's a way to channel this outrage.