Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) chief executive Lloyd Blankfein received $74 million last year, but nobody can be heard calling for his head. The 53-year old Blankfein may have made $314,894 per day in 2007, but his success in avoiding the subprime collapse (and even profiting from it!) saved the company billions.

Surprisingly, some investors are still pushing a say-on-pay proposal that prompted the executive to go on the offensive. In fact, the executive commented that he didn't want anyone "less sophisticated" in the financial industry making decisions on his pay. And perhaps he is right, since he already appears to be one of the most underpaid on Wall Street.

Blankfein and his predecessor Hank Paulson were paid a total of $136 million between 2003 and 2007 while the firm racked up $34.3 billion in profits. The pay as a percentage of profits came in at just 0.4%, which is one of the lowest ratios on Wall Street. As a comparison, Bear Stearns' CEO made 2.2% of its profits over a five year period.

Still many investors and shareholder advocates are insisting that unearned compensation should be returned to shareholders. Whether or not this is fair compensation given the history of these executives remains to be seen.

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