The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week

Capitalist Piggybank The Scrooge McDuck 10 Index

5. Grasso Under Foot

Finally, it's time for the results of our latest reader contest, the one in which we asked you what New York Stock Exchange Chairman Dick Grasso should do with his recently revealed, righteous-outrage-inducing $140 million retirement payout.

Many entrants ignored the guideline that submissions be suitable for a family friendly Web site. Well, it serves us right. We were the ones who gave the contest the snidely provocative title "Where Should Dick Grasso Stick His Money?"

Other entrants chose to make fun of Grasso's baldness, an approach that we at the lab find hopelessly immature. We think it's more appropriate to make fun of Grasso's wedgelike, trapezoidal cranium.

Some noteworthy entries:

• "Grasso's picture reminds me of Scrooge McDuck," writes Ed Klebacha. "Perhaps he should buy gold doubloons and keep them in a vault. Then he could invite his friends from Enron, WorldCom, Global Crossing, and Morgan Stanley (MWD) to a golden swim party." (David Burkart also picked up on the McDuck angle.)
• A reader who requests anonymity writes to remind us of a relevant news item: Four years ago, at the invitation of the Colombian government, Grasso traveled to Colombia to meet with a rebel commander involved in that country's decades-long civil war. The mission was to help explain the economic benefits of peace in Colombia. Because FARC, the group with which Grasso met, supports itself in part through kidnapping, it's fortunate for Grasso that details of his compensation package were released after the meeting, writes our anonymous correspondent. "Had they known how much Mr. Grasso stands to make, the FARC folks probably wouldn't have let his visit be a free one."
• Kevin Dunseath suggests the NYSE chairman endow the Dick Grasso Chair in Corporate Governance at the Ethics Resource Center nonprofit group.
• "A PIGGY bank would seem appropriate," writes Jack Boren.

All good ideas. But the winners of our coveted Yahoo! lunchbox are Suzanne and Igor Mamedalin, who write that Grasso "should exhibit faith in his own worthiness" by investing his $140 million among the 10 companies with the highest paid executives.

We like this. It assumes the system works. It's based on the presumption that highly paid executives like Grasso get what they deserve. They're paid the most money because they create the most value for shareholders. Of course, if this hypothesis turns out to be incorrect, Grasso will get what he deserves then, too.

Just for fun, we at the research lab did a trial run of this proposed portfolio. Using 2002 executive compensation data published earlier this year in BusinessWeek, we put Grasso's 401(k) in stocks boasting last year's 10 highest paid CEOs.

Good news for Grasso! Between April 15 -- roughly the date by which all the 2002 compensation data came out -- and Sept. 2, the Scrooge McDuck portfolio was up 23.6%, well ahead of the Standard & Poor's 500 index's gain of 14.7%. (We ignored dividends.)

But hey, Grasso deserves it, right?

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