Excellent piece in The Wall Street Journal about why attempts to control CEO pay amount to a losing battle.

The piece by Joann Lublin and Scott Thurm should be studied carefully. It gives a history of CEO pay movements, going back to the days of FDR. And it shows how attempts by regulators to rein it in achieved little and couldn't stop CEOs racing ahead of other Americans.

It cites such cases as Harvey Golub, chief of American Express Co. from 1993 to 2000, who was paid about $57 million in salary, bonus and restricted stock over eight years. With the company's market capitalisation climbing from $10 billion to $65 billion, he asked: ''How much of that $55 billion should I get?"

One suspects most Americans would have come with an answer that was different from his.

The piece also tracks how attempts to rein in soaring pay for bosses backfired, and only made things worse. Disclosure for instance pushed pay higher by revealing to CEOs what their peers were getting. Similarly, the 1984 tax on golden parachutes had the effect of inflating the payouts.

And the writers suggest that the new pay rules bought in by the SEC will have zero effect.

This is grim stuff but study it carefully. You can read the entire piece here