(2020-10-02) Hunt Scapegoating The Zeitgeist

Ben Hunt: Scapegoating the Zeitgeist. Shale Companies Had Lousy Returns. Their CEOs Got Paid Anyway. (Wall Street Journal)

Tens of millions of dollars every year to each of these guys. Hey, I could do their job for a fraction of that money! Clearly these guys are guilty of … something. But guilty of what?

In the eyes of the Wall Street Journal, the mortal sin committed by these CEOs – all of whom are professional managers, not founders or entrepreneurs – is NOT that their professional managerial compensation is ridiculous and extreme. No, the mortal sin is that it’s off-narrative, that there’s no pleasant veneer of positive “total shareholder return” to justify their professional managerial compensation. We are told that these four CEOs are over-compensated because the stock price is down, not that they are over-compensated, period.

These four CEOs are presented as “bad apples” in an otherwise perfectly healthy system of professional management behavior. They are presented as scapegoats for a SYSTEM of massive wealth transfer from shareholders to the professional managerial class.

This article is not an attack on that system. It is a defense.