How much power do share holders and stock holders have over the CEOs and other company officials? And what I mean is real power....power on paper is not the same as power in practice. We do have some power over the people in Congress as we can fire them every so often....and that does happen. Is it easy to fire a CEO? What are the safe guards for the share holders that those at the top aren't taking advantage of their positions, e.g., like Enron?

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The Lone Ranger of the AWE liberal elitists.....who was that masked man???

And now, I'm the Elitist of liberal Elitists...

You just hit the crux of the problem.Outrageous CEO pay threatens workers and shareholders. Extraordinary CEO pay levels can lead to earnings manipulation, cooked books and short-sighted corporate actions. There's a bill in congress -- the Shareholder Vote on Executive Compensation Act -- that will go a long way towards fixing the broken system. The bill would give shareholders an advisory vote on their company's executive compensation program and thereby hold boards more accountable for ensuring that their CEOs deserve the pay they receive.

This is called Capitalism. Congress has absolutely no business investigating what a CEO is paid, it is up to the stockholders to question it, since they are the ones he vote in the boards that negotiate this pay and it is stockholders that should vote them out if they are not satisfied. This is classic class warfare, rich against poor. Remember we do not live in a socialist country and should not take out our misfortune on people who make more money. Everybody in this country has the oportunity to make it big and if you decide to stay in a job that pays you less than you want, tough. Learn to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps and go out and make something of yourself, stop blaming others for you laziness, you cry babies.

Couldn't agree more. Congress has about as much business investigating this as they do investigating steroid use in MLB. Who really gives a shit?

A CEO is entitled to just as much money as the shareholders allow....just like congress thinks welfare recipients are ENTITLED to the money THEY get.

>>>How does that square with the $200,000,000,000 bailout of the banks who made bad home loans AND gave their CEOs huge bonuses? Oh, I get it. It is welfare if the cash goes to the poor. It is capitalism if it goes to the banks.

No, it is Welfare if it goes either way. Which, any strict Fiscal Conservative would agree that Corporate Welfare Creates the Same Problems as Social Welfare just in different areas.

Social Welfare subsidizes lack of initiative. Corporate Welfare tells a bussiness if they fail at something than there is no risk cause Congress will steal money from the people and help bail you out.

Of course, a modern Republican is not, in fact a Fiscal Conservative. A Modern Republican is a big government welfare statist just as much as a Neo-Socialist Democrat is. They just pretend to help certain people when all either of them do with their welfare is steal from the People and give it to someone who neither deserves it or needs it.

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"It is the Right of the People to alter or abolish the Government"
Declaration of Independence
"Never trouble another for what you can do for yourself."
Thomas Jefferson
"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand."
Milton Friedman

which is why there is no excuse for welfare and it should be eliminated

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You can never dent spiderwebs