Congress questioned three prominent financial executives today about the huge paydays that they had earned despite sharp losses for shareholders. The three executives included Stan O'Neal of Merrill Lynch, Charles Prince of Citigroup, and Agelo Mozilo of Countrywide Financial. The first two lost their jobs as a result of the decline while Mozilo ended up being bailed out via an acquisition by Bank of America. All of these executives took home enormous pay packages on the backs of shareholders, but claimed that their pay was grossly misrepresented by the media.

The Congressional committee members suggested that most Americans are living in a world where economic security is precarious and there are real economic consequences for failture. But America's top executives seem to be living by different rules. So, the question becomes: When companies fail to perform should they give millions of dollars to their senior executives? The executives responded by bringing up how well the company's performed under their rule before problems hit. They also argued that their actions taken when things went bad would have been taken even if things were going just fine.

One of the biggest issues raised was with the timing of their stock sales. Regulators claimed that they sold stock at a high and ended up making millions as a result. The executives countered that they reported their sales ahead of time to the public through various SEC filings and that meant transparency for shareholders. Moreover, many of the executives still held a vast amount of their personal wealth still invested in the company, and the selling was simply part of a scheduled plan that happened to occur before the market turned.

In the end, this meeting showed many Congressional members that executive compensation isn't all that unreasonable given the great performance of the companies in the past. As one member said, there are no villains present in the room; no fraud was committed; and nothing was done wrong. The problems experienced with this company were simply the result of a turning economy that some risk mismanaged that was industrywide.