General Electric boss gets $89,000 a month for not working

This video from the USA says about itself:

A Japanese parliamentary inquiry has concluded last year’s nuclear meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was “a profoundly man-made disaster — that could and should have been foreseen and prevented.” We speak to former nuclear industry executive Arnie Gundersen about the report and what it means for U.S. nuclear facilities, in particular the 23 with a similar design to the Fukushima plant.

“There is some curious information on Fukushima Unit 1, the first one to fail,” Gundersen says. “It was built by an American company, General Electric, and an American architect/engineer. It’s hard for the Japanese to blame themselves when this was an all-American design … I’m concerned that the nuclear industry in the United States will say it’s a Japanese problem, and it’s not.”

By David Walsh in the USA:

GE executive to be paid $89,000 a month for not working

7 August 2012

General Electric (GE) executive John Krenicki is leaving the giant firm at the end of 2012, bound up with the company’s decision to break up his energy division, where he functions as chief executive and president, into three separate operations.

In return for agreeing not to go to work for any of GE’s rivals for three years, Krenicki will be paid a “retirement allowance” of $89,000 a month for ten years, or some $10.7 million. The allowance is a portion of an exit package worth at least $28.3 million, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Krenicki’s deal also includes nearly $15 million worth of stock options and restricted stock units, and a bonus for 2012 equal to last year’s $2.8 million.

These obscene amounts have become entirely standard in America’s boardrooms. If the media treats the issue in more than a passing fashion, the tone tends to be one of awe or jealousy, rather than outrage. This is the narrow world of the American aristocracy.

The wealthiest New Zealanders have not suffered from the austerity drive being imposed on the working class: here.