It seems that both President Truman and modern CEOs have a similar saying: "The Buck Stops Here". In the case of Truman, it meant that he accepted responsibility for the decisions he made. In the case of CEOs, it apparently means to get as big a golden parachute possible regardless of the financial decisions they made. Do you remember Stan O'Neal, the CEO of Merrill Lynch, who was expected to receive $160,000,000.00 despite Merrill Lynch writing up 7.9 billion dollars in losses (AFP), and in January up to 15 billion dollars (Huffington Post), and finally "crippled", bought by Bank of America. Apparently, economic reality is not "trickle down" but "flood up."