While tens of millions of struggling, unemployed Americans didn't have much to celebrate this past weekend, the rich get richer corporate CEOs found millions of dollars more in their stockings, even though they helped cause the unemployment crisis and economic catastrophe in this country.

Pointing this out engenders the usual strident accusations of "fomenting a class war" and the whining defense of "CEOs earned their gaziilionaire monetary rewards" supposedly because they are successful "free market" competitors.

Horse patooties and cow pies.

As Jonathan Tasini writes at Working Life:

"We hear an enduring myth: the "free market" decides who gets what in an efficient dance of allocation of resources through competition. Garbage. Especially when it comes to CEO pay--though apparently there are some who want to continue the myth of competition.

"The rise of CEO pay has very little to do with competition in the free market. And it has very little to do with the quality of people sought who have to make such...excuse me while I gag...momentous decisions and, then, therefore, demand such huge salaries.

"It has everything to do with two things: cronyism and corruption, which are quite inter-related.

"The CEO stocks the board of directors with his cronies and buddies. He pays them say $20,000 to attend each board meeting, along with first-class air travel and other perks. His buddies serve on the compensation committee. When the subject of pay and stock options arises, the buddies simply rubber stamp whatever the CEO wants or whatever the CEO candidate demands.

"It is not actually competition or a "free market".

"It's actually a monopoly--a monopoly controlled by a relatively small number of people.

"Look at what Nell Minow says. Minow is one of the country's leading authorities on corporate governance:

I've given up on any other reform other than the ability to replace directors who do a bad job. Without that, as long as you still have this very cozy interlocked system of having CEOs control who is on their boards, you're going to have no incentive for directors to say no to bad pay. I mean, when Warren Buffett says that he has knowingly voted for excessive compensation because collegiality trumps independence, you know that there's something really wrong with the system. [emphasis added]

"If we have learned anything from the last couple of years, and the last 30 years actually, it is that most CEOs are not particularly smart. They are not particularly gifted. They are not particularly endowed with special skills to manage companies.

"What they have learned--and I suppose this is a skill--is how to manipulate the system, particularly in the financial sector. They have learned that when Wall Street analysts say "cut your labor costs", they go ahead and slash thousands of jobs--not because it necessarily helps the company's overall performance but because the stock price will improve because they have responded to Wall Street."