Median salaries of CEOs at S&P 500 companies top $1 million, excluding bonus packages and stock options that drive the median compensation up to $6.6 million. That is pretty gross but it is disappointing to learn that heads of charities may also be in the money-grabbing game.

Charity Navigator released its latest ranking of 3005 charities in 2008, and the median salary was $147,273. Perhaps this is not excessive for large organizations with multi-million dollar budgets but, at the top, it is certainly shocking, especially considering that this median is well below the mean.

In the Northeast, median salary was $185,000 and median was at its lowest in the South – $128,678. If we consider large charities only (121 of them in the Northeast), we find a very sizable pay of $300,000 as the median. Among the very smallest charities (most of them located in the South), CEO median dips to $91,750.

Education charities pay their bosses $272, 645 while Religion and Animal organizations weigh in with $90,000 and $106,000 respectively.

Charities with budgets over $500 million pay their CEOS a median average of $695,379 but all charities of whatever stripe have some real winners. The top dog at the NY Philharmonic (yes, it is a registered charity) pulls down a heft $2,649,000 and the education-based Evans Scholars Foundation collects $2,049 for his efforts. The animals can be proud of the Wildlife Conservation Society for giving its leader $725,485.

Thanks to lovely nepotism, the kingpins at the American Endowment Foundation are managing nicely. Four members of the Tobin family collectively sock away $450,000. Three thicker-than-water brothers at the Christian Relief Services Charities walk off with $467,000. Even better are Larry, Frances and Larri Sue Jones of Feed the Children who feed themselves nicely with $630,000. The Kings of those who believe charity begins at home is the Crouch family who run the show at Trinity Broadcasting Network. Their Big Four smash the $1.1 million barrier. Paul, the President, collects $419,000.

In general, excessive salary varies by location with the head honchos of Mountain West education societies earning $184,000 less cash than their peers in the Northeast. As they say, location, location, location.

Federal prosecutors today charged Barclays Bank in a two-count information in Washington alleging the financial institution violated economic sanctions in dealings with countries that include Iran, Cuba and Libya. Justice Department attorneys allege Barclays “knowingly and willfully” facilitated U.S. dollar transactions “for a number of parties and countries” that are sanctioned by the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the Treasury Department.

Here’s the good part. The bank’s attorneys at Sullivan & Cromwell negotiated a deferred prosecution agreement with the government in which the London-based bank will pay $298 million to settle the criminal charges. The federal government will receive $149 million, and the rest is designated for the District Attorney of the County of New York.

Here’s an even better part. According to the agreement, Barclays’ head of compliance and regulatory affairs must certify by April 6, 2011, that the bank has completed comprehensive training on policy regarding United States, United Nations and European Union sanctions for all employees who are involved in the processing of U.S. dollar payments.

For the few of you who enjoy these things, here are the details concerning the case. Just CLICK HERE.

Letting a woman in your life is bad business.  Rex Harrison in his alter-ego life as Henry Higgins knew that but the folks at Hewlett Packard are slow to catch on.   First they tried Carly Fiorina as CEO and Chair of the Board, and she  spent much of her time convincing Forbes magazine to declare her the most powerful woman in America.  Hewlett Packard didn’t get the message so they let her go.   HP tried its luck with Patricia Dunn.   Another bomb.   So HP switched to a — a man!  Enter Mark Hurd.   Unfortunately, Mark had a girlfriend in addition to his wife.   This girlfriend, a very slick-looking chick, has a lawyer.  Guess who?   Gloria Allred.   So all hell broke loose.   Mark is now gone and we wonder how much loot he will take with him.

In this last quarter alone, HP pulled in $9 billion.  The question is what portion of this goes to the investors and what portion goes to Gloria and her client?

Henry Higgins understood the facts of life.

Alex Rodriguez – you know who he is – was limping along as a Texas Ranger on a salary of  $252 million designed to be paid out over a 10 year period.    Barely able to make do, Alex left for greener pastures.   He renegotiated a salary with the NY Yankees that will bring him $275 million also over 10 years.    Do not for one moment think Alex is happy.  Consider that nearly all of Alex’s income is via salary and you can understand his miseries.   Larry Ellison, head honcho of Oracle Industries “earns” a salary of $180 million per year, and keep in mind that salary is just a very small part of what Larry collects each year.   Surely Alex knows this and it is eating his heart out.

Now that Alex has become the youngest baseball player ever to reach the magic mark of 600 home runs for a career, he will certainly demand that the Yankee management reconsider his true worth.   After all, one day Alex will hold the home run record for a career.  That is worth something.  Among his bargaining chips will be that such nobodies as Joe Mauer of the Minnesota Twins and Johann Santana of the NY Mets make $23 million per year.   Do you even know who they are?    That they are so close in salary to Alex must strike him as intolerable.    In fact, it is killing me.

Who is more valuable to mankind than Alex?   I can’t think of anyone.   It is good that Ellison has announced he is leaving 95% of his money to charities because he couldn’t get a base hit if his life depended on it.   Although Alex hasn’t said what he will do with all his money, it is a very good bet that he plans to one-up Larry and leave 98% of his money to charities.   That’s the kind of guy he is.

For many years, I have been greedily devouring the real estate section in the weekend Wall Street Journal. There are always excellent bargains for those willing to do a bit of homework. Here is my favorite of the week.

4523northsawyerroad.com This beauty is on the east shore of Oconomowoc Lake in Wisconsin, has 445 feet of lake frontage and It encompasses 6.25 acres of lake front, woods and open area. Very near to Insterstate 94, 25 minutes from Milwaukee and 90 minutes from O’Hare Airport. A steal at $6 million. But I am duty bound to give you information of another property located on 5 acres of wooded terrain, having every imaginable variety of tree: walnut, spruce, elm, douglas fir, maple, oak, etc. The owner estimates a mimimum of 3000 trees on his land. This property also contains plenty of open ground. It is 500 feet from the mighty Huron River, and Swift Run, bisects the property before emptying out into the Huron. Wide-mouth bass are occasionally seen in Swift Run. The compound is accessed via a driveway 1000 feet long and has a lovely circular drive at its end. Like the $6 million dollar special of the week, it, too, is only minutes from Interstate 94, a mere 25 minutes from Detroit’s international airport, 45 minutes due west of Detroit and 50 minutes due north of Toledo. Secluded, yet only minutes from Eastern Michigan University and practically walking distance to the Ann Arbor golf course. An especially nice feature of the home is that halfway up the driveway, the owner has posted a sign that reads: BROOKLYN 636 miles and has an arrow pointing eastward. The elderly owners, with 146 years between them (and 6 college degrees to boot, if their counting can still be trusted) are willing to sacrifice for – GET THIS! – $2 million. Hurry, hurry, this will not last long.

SPECIAL OFFER! If the purchaser can speak with either a genuine Nebraska accent or do a good imitation of a Brownsville, Brooklyn accent, owners will knock $150,000 off the price. Otherwise:

FIRM!

The sporting life is not the way to riches but for a precious few it has been a bonanza. Here are the Kings of Dollars. Keep in mind that only a small part of their fortunes came from playing games. The rest is vile, capitalist investment.

[This is easily the most important post I have ever published - or will publish.]

Tiger Woods – $900 million in his mattress and elsewhere.
Michael Jordan – $500 million.
Magic Johnson – $500 million.
Greg Norman – $410 million.
Michael Schumacher – $400 million.
Arnold Palmer – $375 million.
Alex Rodriguez – $300 million.
Jack Nicklaus – $280 million.
Oscar de la Hoya – At least $175 million. Possibly double that.
David Beckham – $175 million.
Phil Mickelson – $150 million.
Kobe Bryant – $140 million. [Up to now, mostly from sport.]
Floyd Mayweather – $90 million. [Up to now, mostly from sport.]
LeBron James – $90 million. [Up to now, mostly from sport.]
Klitschko brothers – $30 million each. [Entirely from sport.]

But what about those slam-dunking, grand-slamming, hole-in-one producing Rothschilds? Well, actually, this family of great athletes began segmenting over 150 years ago and many of those impoverished descendants are rumored to have as little as $1 billion each. Still, if need be, it is said that the clan can be rallied together to come up with $400 billion. The House of Rothschild keeps a low profile and disdains comparisons with the nouveaux riche such as the Rockefellers who, in turn, are contemptuous of Gates and Buffet (who seem to have to share a single necktie). The first Rockefeller did not mind flaunting his wealth and he remains (officially) the richest person who ever lived. (Cleopatra is down around 20th place.) At one time, Jack’s wealth was 3% of the gross domestic product. In comparison to that, Gates and Buffet combined are candidates for the poorhouse. But we can only build fantasies concerning the Rothschild wealth. Damn Jew bankers! All they wanted was to be in charge of the planet – and they were (and maybe still are.)

This video gets 96% on my exam scorecard.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOP2V_np2c0&feature=player_embedded#

Sent to me by Leonard Carrier.

In early May, I posted two essays on socialism that received a battering from several readers. [Please check the archives.] I readily concede that my arguments were poorly developed but am now happy to report that Professor Michael Green of Hofstra College has weighed in on the matter with what seems to me to be unassailable reasoning backed with plenty of facts. In a sentence: I read his essay as establishing that capitalism is rotten to the core. That, at least, is my interpretation, not necessarily his. In fact, somewhat pollyannaishly, Green thinks the world can be salvaged by throwing out all Republican congressmen and replacing them with Democrats. (Let us simply and charitably turn our faces away from this embarrassing display of naiveté that plays no central role in his formidable essay.)

Here is a link to the article, which I took the liberty of reprinting (without permission) in watchingpolitics.com. Please CLICK HERE.

You are now married 40 years. Your spouse is institutionalized. That means you are STUPID. Here are the facts.

One of you needs institutionalizing because old age does that sort of thing, you know. Can you protect your accumulated wealth or does it all have to go to care for the one who is ill? Answer: Your money is gone. Spouses have a legal duty to support each other. The income or assets of a working spouse must be used for the care of the spouse in the nursing home.

If there’s not enough income to pay for long-term care, couples must start liquidating their holdings, selling stocks and bonds, cashing in C.D.’s and those pension funds. Once their assets sink low enough ($2,000 in most states), the person who needs care can qualify for Medicaid.

By clever division of assets, with the help of a pro, you may be able to keep up to $109,000. Medicaid calls this “exempt resources.” That is tops. That is, if you start out with over a million bucks. Otherwise, you can’t keep even that much. Maybe as little as $21,000. Maybe nothing, if you are lucky and start out dirt poor.

Now that your spouse is on Medicaid, you are not home free. You no longer have to pay the bills BUTMedicaid will want its money back, a process known as “estate recovery.” Medicaid will not take funds from the miserable jerk who is not dumb enough to be the sick one but when he dies, it will attempt to collect from his estate. Medicaid gets paid before the children (unless they’re under 21 or disabled) or any other heirs. Medicaid is only a loan! It wants its money back.

Since sickness often comes with warnings, you may think divorce before institutionalization is the way to go. Wrong! Sure, you can divide the assets to protect the one who is healthy and sane but the leftover junk – the spouse headed for the long term care facility – will be pounced upon for her cash right down to where she needs Medicaid. Not a nice thing, you know.

What’s left? Since warning signs usually come early, don’t neglect them. Murder done early enough for you not to get caught as an asset protector is not the best way to go but the only way to go. Divorce is messy and costly. Remember, too, that everyone married more than 40 years is sick of it all. Usually, it only takes 25 years and people stay together because they are dumb and/or chicken-hearted and yellow-bellied. So why wait until sickness is around the corner? Get a good start on the good life and call it quits via a good axe job after 20 years. You can beg the spouse to commit suicide but that never works because he/she prefers you to go first. Here’s the proof.

Beware! Swedes are moving in. Who would have guessed that the worst country on earth, the murder capital of the world, overt expression of hatred toward immigrants, drug pushers everywhere, and police and government rife with corruption. Well, wait a moment. With regard to the latter, I would have guessed.

While the rest of us are going Swedish -meaning greater gender equality, drinking less, wearing seatbelts, more freedom of expression, working fewer hours, free medical care, and all the rest of those good things that make Sweden the envy of the non-Scandinavian world, the Swedes themselves are moving backward. The economy is not in such great shape and both Volvo and Saab have sold out to foreign firms. The government can’t afford to operate schools and they are being privatized as fast as wildfire spreads.

In the south of the country, where refugees are concentrated, anti-immigrant sentiment has taken over. The Sweden Democrats, a xenophobic and populist party, entered parliament for the first time, and they are already quite important in local politics. Neither Denmark nor Norway has had such a crush of immigrants as Sweden has had, so up to now they are free of mass hysteria.

Sweden had 230 murders last year; Washington D.C had 143 but the population in D.C. is only about half that of Sweden. So, on this basis, there does not seem much to choose from. In the good old, golden days of real socialism – say about 1990 – there were 120 homicides in Sweden, which compared very favorably to D.C.’s 472. Sweden’s race to catch up is not very flattering to the country.

For as long as I recall, rich Swedes fled the country to avoid taxes. Remember Bjorn Borg? But they contributed in a very unstingy way to charities. Statistics suggest this a bygone thing.

Swedes now read crime novels as they never had done before. 140 were published in the last 6 months. You may not think there is a connection between crime and fascination with it among ordinary people but I suspect there is.

Squeaky clean Sweden is now squeaking with rust. It has an anti-corruption team- I doubt such a thing existed in 1970 – and the team is looking this week into allegations that Saab offered huge, secret “commissions” to promote the sale of its Gripen fighter jet to the Czech Republic and Austria. Volvo turns out to have been involved in the oil-for-food deal that made Ollie North such a favorite with American presidents and TV networks.

There is corruption in education and prisons have been turned into country clubs for the rich. Judges are going to jail for bribery. Violent crime is on the rise. A letter to a newspaper begins: “Sweden has the most psychopaths (per capita) walking the streets….A famous psycho I jailed in 1987 is Thomas Quick……He serves multiple life sentences for many murders but keeps getting out. and has faced 20 hearings. The swedish professor, G.W. Persson has stated that Sweden has 250,000 potential dangerous psychos. I say it is an understatement. YOU VISIT SWEDEN JEOPARDIZING YOUR LIFE!” Now, that is encouraging news for tourists.

Svenska Dagbladet writes that individuals in Stockholm’s Police Dept. have been selling detailed dossiers on criminals to criminals, and other reporters maintain that the practice is endemic. Recently, when a drug dealer in Central Pattaya was caught, he did the obvious – he offered the cops a bribe. this time, he did not get lucky. An additional charge of attempting to bribe a policeman was tacked on to the original charges.

Rape has gained in popularity over the last 20 years. In Sweden, 46 incidents of rape are reported per 100,000 residents. This figure is double as many as in the UK which reports 23 cases, and four times that of the other Nordic countries, as well as in Germany and France. The figure is up to 20 times the figure for certain countries in southern and eastern Europe.

In short, something is rotten in the state of Sweden, and we have been misled.