Marie Antoinette would have been right at home in the United States where financial firms have increased the perks and benefits, like country club dues, chauffeured drivers, personal financial planning services, home security systems and parking, for their chief executives.
Nell Minnow, co-founder of the Corporate Library, has been quite blunt about it in an interview with the Washington Post.
"Marie Antoinette could fit into this crowd without missing a beat,'' Minnow said. "Many people would think the solution would be not to be so provocative of unrest and unhappiness, but no, they're saying, 'Go ahead and do that, just build bigger walls around your house.' "
This is disturbing for several reasons. First, a lot of these financial services firms were bailed out by the US government, so in effect US taxpayers are paying for their largesse. Secondly, if boards are incapable of saying no to providing a CEO with a chauffeur, they will be incapable of knocking back inappropriate acquisitions that are too expensive and will chew up the company's resources.
But finally, and most importantly, this could have an impact on society. When companies are lavishing rewards on their leaders while the rest of the community is tightening their belts, it alienates and feeds public anger and rage.
Writing in the Financial Times, historian Simon Schama suggest you can hear the guillotines being sharpened for the new Marie Antoinettes.
"Far be it for me to make a dicey situation dicier but you can't smell the sulphur in the air right now and not think we might be on the threshold of an age of rage,'' Schama writes. "The Spanish unions have postponed a general strike; the bloody barricades and the red shirts might have been in Bangkok not Berlin; and, for the moment, the British coalition leaders sit side by side on the front bench like honeymooners canoodling on the porch; but in Europe and America there is a distinct possibility of a long hot summer of social umbrage." Indeed, seeing Tea Party favourite Rand Paul winning the Republican Party's nomination for Kentucky is a sighn of public discontent shaking governments to their foundations. Schama says government at the very least need to ensure the pain is distributed equally. If they don't, it's going to get ugly. "In the France of 1789, the erstwhile nobility became regular citizens, ended their exemption from the land tax, made a show of abolishing their own privileges, turned in jewellery for the public treasury; while the clergy's immense estates were auctioned for La Nation. It is too much to expect a bonfire of the bling but in 2010 a pragmatic steward of the nation's economy needs to beware relying unduly on regressive indirect taxes, especially if levied to impress a bond market with which regular folk feel little connection. At the very least, any emergency budget needs to take stock of this raw sense of popular victimisation and deliver a convincing story about the sharing of burdens. To do otherwise is to guarantee that a bad situation gets very ugly, very fast."
Meanwhile US company boards keep handing out riches and perks. If the backlash hits corporate America, they will, like Marie Antoinette, have no one to blame but themselves.
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