During this recession, there has been much discussion of the exorbitant salaries paid to executives. CEOs of failed companies are walking away secure, while the employees of these companies are losing their shirts, or rather, their homes.

According to The Corporate Library, CEOs’ salaries fell last year for the first time in the previous six years. However, when one compares the market’s performance to their average drop in salary (including bonuses and benefits), the difference is dramatic. Clearly, shareholders bore the brunt of the recession.

Even now, observers were surprised, to say the least, to discover that executive bonuses were hardly impacted during the second half of 2008, even though many companies failed to reach their projected goals. In the past, stockholders often clung to the belief that a good executive was worth any price. Now that so many companies sank with high-paid CEOs at the helm, this assumption is being questioned by all.

This past March, when AIG paid excessive bonuses to those same executives that nearly ruined the company, public outcry reached its maximum volume. But throughout 2008, while the government bailed out companies, banks were paying out huge bonuses.

Since unemployment has reached ten percent, the ethics of this high-cost practice are of as much concern as ever. And it isn’t just America that is concerned — in the EU, France, Germany and the UK recently signed a document limiting banker’s bonuses.

Some claim that such high pay, which enables executives to live well, even after being fired leads to risk taking. After all, if there are no consequences to the CEO, why wouldn’t he push for risky strategies with a potentially high payout?

In May, measures were underway in the Senate to increase stockholder power, even though some claimed that excessive stockholder power was exactly what lead to the financial crisis we are currently in.

A number of leaders in big business got together on the twenty-first of September to discuss what could be done to reward executives in an equitable fashion, while gaining control over their ever-increasing salaries. Their plan: “Establish a clear link between pay, strategy, and performance.”

Corporate boards all over are working to change things, if only in response to the public’s unyielding decree. In the future, expect payouts to be more closely aligned with performance, that is, no huge bonuses in poor-performance years.

Also, shouldn't there be more focus on accomplishments over the long term? Since analysts feel that too much emphasis has been placed upon short term achievements that may do nothing for the company in the long haul. President Obama, and others, have especially focused upon short term bonuses.

These changes may not be easy to implement. Corporations still have concerns, such as potentially scaring off good management just when it’s needed the most, by not being able to promise adequate monetary incentive when the company is performing poorly.

It is important to remember, as well, that CEOs cannot control everything. Sometimes, for example, a recession will set in....