2.2 million base salary and the rest is stock options, etc. That's my understanding.

Well, if they don't bail out the auto industry and put the money they WOULD have used into health and human services programs and job retraining and small business loan incentives there might be less fallout. And we really NEED more money in health and human services and other programs like job retraining. Plus, there have been studies that have shown that entrepreneurship is high in a market where people get laid off (maybe not the exact right words, but that's the concept anyway).

What gets me is all the focus on the airlines and now automakers. Whatever happened to competition and market driven forces? If you can't make it, you can't make it. And there ARE bankruptcy options available. Restructuring isn't so bad. It really isn't.

If we would mandate higher mpg requirements and smaller car size to assist development of higher mpg cars, then we'd be in front of the 8 ball rather than behind it right now. But no..... we can't do squat. It's like trying to force a ban on sales of cigarettes. We know it causes cancer and look at other products that cause cancer--they're mostly all off the market or regulated heavily, but because of Big Tobacco we still have people coming down with tobacco caused cancer.

I get torqued up because the auto industry blocked higher mpg requirements and has known how to produce cars for quite some time that are more efficient in many ways but doesn't. We won't invest in alternate energy development in the same fashion that we offer bailout.

And the banks? So we've done all these things--cut interest rates and given $$ to them, and they're still not lending. Um duh.... but if you don't put MANDATORY stuff in there requiring things then hardly anyone is going to do what you "suggest."

Look at the total bailout $$ that we had available in the beginning and then divide the US population into that and see how much $$ we could all get if it was divided up. Fun exercise. Then take out the population under 18 and do it again.

No one's going to bail out the job sector in which I work. I'm in health/human services. In fact, my organization suffered an almost $1,000,000 funding loss at a time when demand for services is increasing due to the economy. It's looking bad for next fiscal year's budget too. We haven't laid off yet, but it may be coming, which means that we'll have to cut services and demand will still increase. I'm at the bottom end of the trickle down and seeing its effects every day. But I'll end up in the unemployment line too because they won't put the money where it can make an actual difference.

<sigh>