Marketwatch reported (quoting the NYT), "Lee Raymond, the chairman and chief executive officer of Exxon Mobil Corp., earned $144,573 for each day of the 13 years he served at the top of the oil company, according to a report in Saturday's New York Times."

I ran some quick math using historical pricing data and figured that under Raymond's direction stockholders of XOM received a 600% return on their money. That's pretty good. But is it good enough to justify the executive pay?

That means Raymond alone (forget about all the other executives) was paid in excess of $140K per day for a stock price increase of about $.01 per day for stockholders. Maybe this is a little out of control?

I'm all for paying executives what they are worth. My father is a banking exec and he faces a lot of stress and long hours. Surely we, the stockholders, owe something for this. But $140K per day? I'm not so sure about that. Especially since oil prices really aren't in the hands of oil companies. Isn't there some dumb luck involved in being the executive of a company during a historical runup in raw material prices?

Fair or not, stockholders (and institutional investors who represent them) need to realize this is their money. It could have just as easily come back as dividends. At what point does compensation just become a scam?mortgage calculator