INTERESTING SALARIES AND SO-CALLED LEADERSHIP

The current economic difficulties going on in America are very interesting not only because of poor policies by banks and other financial institutions, but because of poor leadership and high salaries. In the St. Louis area, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, nonbank lenders - investment firms, insurance companies and the like have sharply slowed their lending in St. Louis, bankers say, so borrowers are returning to banks. Nationwide banks restrict lending as their capital levels shrink. Bankers are seeing an influx of deposits as investors pull money out of the sickly stock and bond markets.

In the old days in major league baseball, if players had a good season, they usually received a pay raise. If they had a bad year, they would have to take a pay cut, often a large one. The Bank of America is about to go under. Interesting that their president was paid more than $20 million in 2007. Paid $20 million in one year and has led his bank to the steps of having to be purchased by someone because of poor management. The is unbelievable! But if that is happening at Bank of America, you know it is happening in financial institution all across our country.

Like everyone else in the United States, I don't know if our new president's bailout will work. I pray for him everyday as I do other leaders. Hopefully it will. But it will not work with the amount of greed that surrounds the financial world in America.

Education is another area where the salaries for administrators is out of proportion to what is paid to professors in college and teachers in elementary and secondary education. Ohio State University is being lead by E. Gordon Gee. Because he runs the largest campus in the US with more that 50,000 students and a budget of $4 billion, he thinks colleges should get more funding. Funding for what? To raise his salary? Ohio State wrote checks in the amount of $1.3 last year to Dr. Gee. What do college presidents do? The salaries for coaches in colleges is out-of-sight. Greed and more greed.

A friend of mine who used to be a college president and is a great educator when asked what a college president does by a prospective president said this: "Get out on the campus. Meet students and faculty and pick up the trash." That would be a good idea for Dr. Gee.

No matter how you slice this, the financial problems come from greed. The folks who work in financial institutions had to learn this somewhere. Was it in the universities where Dr. Gee wants more money?