This week the Wall Street Journal published an article about Home Depot CEO Bob Nardelli's resignation. With a $210 million exit package, why would Mr. Nardelli feel compelled to do a good job? Mr. Nardelli's total compensation package for the year 2005 was $22.8 million. Is that not enough? Do ya think someone might be just a LITTLE greedy?

Math for the little people: If an average middle class corporate employee makes $75,000 in compensation a year (and that's a bit low considering that benefits can bring the compensation package up to $90-100K), his/her exit package would be, in Home Depot terms, $690,000. M'kay. If that were the amount of my exit package, I would break EVERY COMPANY RULE IN THE BOOK and ask my manager to fire me on a daily basis. I would get down on my KNEES, buy her flowers with note cards that say, "Please fire me", come to work rip-roaring drunk, and watch porn on my company workstation.

I am rather angry about this because of the pain and suffering I and my coworkers have endured because of Sarbanes Oxley, when it is clearly evident that the corruption lies in the upper echelons of company management. I said in an earlier rant about SOX that why in a holy hell would a person making $75K a year do something to jeopardize their position? If I were fired from my job, I couldn't just sit around on the beach having a cabana boy bring me margaritas all day. But Nardelli can.

The only way possible, at this point in time, to correct greedy CEOs is not to buy stock in companies that offer exorbitant exit packages to CEOs.

Here is a list from the WSJ of some of those companies other than Home Depot:

Henry McKinnell, Pfizer, $200 MM
Tom Freston, Viacom, $59 MM
Phillip Purcell, Morgan Stanley, $62 MM
Carly Fiorina, HP, $21 MM
Jill Barad, Mattel, $50 MM
Michael Ovitz, Walt Disney, $140 MM

In the meanwhile I am going to write a shareholder proposal for my employer that requests a $750K exit package per employee.