Greed at a Glance
A weekly update on avarice in America and beyond

November 6, 2006

Don’t call Angelo Mozilo, the sixth highest-paid CEO in the United States last year, just another overpaid executive. Run-of-the-mill overpaid execs get lavish pensions when they retire. Mozilo, the CEO at the nation’s largest mortgage lender, is getting lavish millions for not retiring. For delaying his retirement until 2009, reports last week revealed, the 67-year-old Mozilo will receive $10 million from Countrywide Financial as a “reimbursement” for the pension dollars he would have collected over the next two years. Naturally, Mozilo will also receive a bit of compensation for working until 2009, as much as $11.9 million annually, depending on the company’s profit picture. To brighten that picture, Countrywide last week announced plans to cut its workforce by some 2,500 jobs . . .

Wise wealthy people worry, all the time, about the impact of enormous wealth — on their kids. The latest reason to worry: the guilty plea entered last week by Michael Pickens, the son of Texas billionaire oil tycoon and corporate raider T. Boone Pickens. Seems that Michael received a fax addressed to a “Dr. Mitchell” with a tip on a hot stock. Michael, a sharpie just like his old man, immediately realized the fax was a fake meant to trick people into buying the stock. Michael liked the trick, so much so that he put three of his own stocks on the letter and then faxed off about a million copies. The scheme worked. Michael eventually cashed out $300,000 in profits. Unfortunately, two of the fax machines that received Michael’s fake fax sat in offices of the federal Securities and Exchange Commission, “not a great idea for conducting an investment scam,” notes Wayne State white-collar crime expert Peter Henning. Pickens now faces up to five years in jail . . .

America’s major daily newspapers regularly spill considerable ink on stories that rank our nation’s top-paid business executives. But we seldom see stories that list our top-paid journalists. And who might be today’s richest scribe? That distinction, media watchdog Norman Solomon suggested last week, likely belongs to Thomas Friedman, the globe-trotting New York Times columnist and best-selling author. Back in 1978, Friedman married into “one of the 100 richest families in the country.” His current home in the Washington, D.C. suburbs, valued at $9.3 million, sits on seven-plus prime acres near a top D.C. area country club. Does any of this matter? Friedman, notes Solomon, has been a tireless cheerleader for global trade policies that “give very low priority to reducing economic inequality.” His “outsized economic privileges” may help explain his indifference to the ongoing impact of the policies he so glibly cheers . . .

Journalism needs more rich people. Only “hometown rich guys,” goes the argument now making the rounds in newspaper circles, can rescue big-city dailies from their cost-cutting corporate chain owners. Among the deep-pockets getting hailed as saviors of America's free press: mega millionaire PR executive Brian Tierney, who bought the Philadelphia Inquirer this past June. Up the seaboard, former General Electric CEO Jack Welch is dropping hints he'll bid for the Boston Globe. Wealthy individuals, fans of this trend claim, will be less likely than corporate owners to slash newsroom staffing to keep Wall Street happy. Count Edward Wasserman, an ethics prof at Virginia’s Washington and Lee, as a skeptic. Why should anyone imagine, he asks, that bliss “would be more achievable when news organizations are owned by hard-driving, fabulously wealthy individuals — who amassed great riches by cutting corners, cutting costs and, for all I know, cutting throats”? Tierney, Wasserman notes, has already announced plans to cut jobs at the Inquirer . . .

Buying your own daily newspaper, some of America’s most notable rich are finding, can put something of a strain on the family finances. That seems to be the case with David Geffen, the Hollywood tycoon anxious to buy the Los Angeles Times. To raise the cash for that purchase, Geffen is having to part with some prized personal possessions. Last month, Geffen sold two paintings off his walls, one by Jasper Johns and another by Willem De Kooning. The total sales price: $145.3 million. Last week came news that Geffen has cut a deal to sell an even bigger blockbuster, his Jackson Pollock “No. 5, 1948.” The price: $134 million, the most money ever paid for a single painting. The buyer: Mexican financial wheeler-and-dealer David Martinez. The Pollock figures to end up on a wall in the New York super-luxury apartment Martinez bought two years ago for $54.7 million.

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