What never ceases to amaze me is the largesse of corporations towards CEOs, even as they preside over the loss of hundreds of billions in shareholder wealth.

Check out the latest piece of research from the Corporate Library which shows that CEOs from 11 of the biggest U.S. companies were awarded a total of $865 million in pay in the last two years. All this as a reward for presiding over a total loss of $640 billion in shareholder value. Nice work if you can get it!

On the shame file are AT&T Inc, bellsouth Corporation, Hewlett-Packard, Home Depot, Lucent Technologies, Merck & Co., Pfizer, Safeway, Time Warner, Verizon Communications, and Wal-Mart Stores.

Home Depot CEO Robert Nardelli for example received $50.7 million in total compensation. Shareholders on the other hand got a 5-year total stock return of negative 19 percent. Lucent CEO Patricia Russo got $17.3 million in total compensation when the company's 5-year total shareholder return was negative 80 percent.

And a lot of the blame has been put on mutual funds, according to a separate piece of research from the Corporate Library, done in conjunction with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

According to this report, the funds aid and abet the lucrative pay hikes. The basic problem is that they are unwilling to use the weight of their proxy power to keep a lid on executive compensation. According to the report, mutual funds voted to support management recommendations on compensation issues three times out of four. ''Our findings indicate that, with a few exceptions, the largest mutual fund families are complicit in runaway executive compensation for failing to vote in the best interests of the shareholders," the report said.