Here is BloggingStocks' take on whether "macroeconomic woes" should affect CEO pay:

On one level, criticizing rising executive pay based on the performance of the economy is grossly unfair: executives should be paid based on their marginal value to the company, not based on broader economic trends that they have no control over. The problem is that executives routinely benefit from factors they have no control over: any CEO of any oil company is doing quite well just for being in the game. When things are going well, everyone's happy, and shareholders generally don't complain about CEO pay when they're earning double-digit returns. But when CEOs don't take a hit with the shareholders on the way down, it's not fair. CEOs are in the ideal "Heads I win, tails it wasn't my fault and I still win" situation.

Right now, companies can be run by small clique of insiders who have virtually no stake in the company's long-term future -- and decades can go by without any accountability. Until that changes, executive compensation in America will continue to be a disaster.