First off, there have been some obscene examples of huge salaries and bonuses paid to execs who either didn't deserve them or didn't deserve nearly what they got. However, it goes back to where I think you are wrong. You say that the shareholders no longer have an effective say in the company. What makes you say that? I get voting info and proxies sent all the time and I admit it often hits the trash. Shareholders can get together and stop the obscene bonuses, but most of us are not so inclined to do so. Jarislowsky's book The Investment Jungle is an interesting read, and he is a big proponent of shareholders, institutional and otherwise, and the Board of Directors taking a bigger interest in the actions of the managers.

I am not sure how H. Paulson has profited from the crisis. There has been too much deregulation in the US, and not enough checks on the stock market here as well, but I think I would have to see some real evidence that he did anything in order to personally profit from the sh** that has gone on.

For the most part, people are mad at the money they have lost. I understand that to a point, but most take no personal responsibility. We have all been a bit negligent in assuming "it will come back" and not stopping losses early, much the way Paulson et co have been negligent in thinking that the economy/market will recover and self regulate.

I have spent most of my life on the farm or on a baseball pitching mound. Griping about weather, umpires, grain prices, other grain exporting countries has done me and others no good. We need to control what we can control, and learn to live with the rest. And as far as corporate governance goes, we can do a lot more than we do now if we put an effort into it, but very few have taken that initiative.