and john mackey of wholefoods took $1. what is the advantage of taking these small salaries in the beginning and then going for the big payoffs at the end when their companies do better? guest: 1 cents, it does a line there -- in a sense, it does align their fortunes with the shareholders. but you have to remember, some of this is good pr. you've got these tiny packages being taken by people who work founders or co-founders, who owned huge chunks of the company already. not taking cash is not really very much sweat for them. or you have people like ken lewis, who in fact, was ordered by the government to give back what he had already made and stop taking pay for the rest of the year because, thank you very much, the rest of america was already bailing out his company. host: back to the phones. we're talking to joann lublin about ceo pay and perks. the next call is from michigan, mary, go ahead. caller: this is a game where you are going to pay the executives and it is going to go right into the pocket, and that does not ha