Let's say you are CEO of a mid-sized community bank with $3 or $4 billion in assets. You have always been a prudent manager yet your bank is suffering. Hell, everyone is. To survive you have eliminated the year-end bonuses, including your own, and are going to cut the dividend. It is the frugal thing to do.
Now, let's imagine you are Charles Prince, the former CEO of Citigroup. You have been running Citigroup for four years and, frankly, you have run it into the ground. Your principle contribution to management has been to tell those whiny little twerps at Risk Management to shut the fuck up and let you party in peace. In four years you snatched over $50 million in salary (not counting all of the unbooked freebees) and you generated uncountable billions of dollars in losses. In leaving you took an additional $22 million severance, the Golden Parachute. You get a free office, secretary, and car with driver for the next five years because, Lord knows, you can't afford that shit now that you're unemployed. You're bank is getting a second $20 billion gift (bailout) from the Feds because the first one, for $25 billion, disappeared into the fetid swamp that is the Citigroup accounts.
In a just world, Charles Prince and a lot of other CEOs would be wearing prison denim and turning big rocks into small rocks for the rest of their lives. But the world is not just. If you steal a donut and you go to jail. If you steal millions they will pay you millions more just to leave.
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