Today’s Number of the Day is 11 percent.

The Wall Street Journal reports that chief executives of 350 major U.S.companies got big rewards in 2010. Their salaries, along with bonuses, stocks, and stock options, jumped 11 percent.  

According to the WSJ’s compensation survey, Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman received $84.3 million. That’s more than twice what he earned in 2009. Oracle’s Lawrence Ellison took home $68.6 million, which was actually down 17% from the year before. CBS CEO Leslie Moonves pocketed $53.9 milllion, up 38% from 2009.

After the economic crisis of the past two years, it should be pretty clear that regulation is not going to solve this problem—nor, in fact, is it clear that regulation should intercede in the area of CEO compensation. This is an area where boards of directors and shareholders should be held responsible, and until now, they have both failed.

Shareholders are passive. Boards of directors are captive. But let us be clear: ownership is a more powerful vehicle for change than regulation, and if the owners of corporate America—meaning shareholders—aren’t willing to flex their muscles, nothing will change.

Now, on a less serious note, our second Number of the Day! FULL POST

Jon Lee Anderson of The New Yorker discusses his article on the U.S. struggle to win hearts and minds in Afghanistan, saying that not one American in Afghanistan says the U.S. is winning there.  FULL POST

Anne-Marie Slaughter, who was until recently the State Department’s director of Policy Planning, and Wall Street Journal's foreign affairs columnist Bret Stephens discuss the complexities of U.S.-Pakistani relations following the Osama bin Laden raid.  FULL POST

U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) says Republicans want to balance the budget on the backs of the middle class, responding to a speech by U.S. House Speaker John Boehner about his plans to hold a hard line in debt-ceiling negotiations (CLICK HERE to read an article about the Boehner speech).  FULL POST

 ONLY ON THE BLOG: Answering today’s six OFF-SET questions is Dr. William R. Harvey, president of Virginia’s Hampton University since 1978.  His 33-year term is one of the longest tenures of any sitting president of a college or university in the country.

After graduating from Talladega College, Harvey served three years on active duty with the United States Army, and he is currently a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Reserve. Dr. Harvey earned his doctorate in College Administration from Harvard University in 1972. Prior to assuming his current position, he served as Assistant for Governmental Affairs to the Dean of the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University; Administrative Assistant to the President at Fisk University; and as Administrative Vice President at Tuskegee University.

You and your wife, Norma Harvey, just gave a gift of $1 million to the university you’ve been leading for three decades. First of all, how did you happen to have an extra million dollars in your account?

In addition to being the President of  Hampton University for 33 years, I have been 100 percent owner of the Pepsi Cola Bottling Company in  Houghton, Michigan for 26 years.  I am pleased that people in Michigan like Pepsi Cola.   FULL POST

WHO SUPPORTED BIN LADEN? – President Barack Obama said he thinks Osama bin Laden likely had a group of supporters within Pakistan helping to keep the al Qaeda leader secure for years, despite an U.S.-led international manhunt that extended for nearly a decade with Islamabad's ostensible support. In an interview with CBS' "60 Minutes" that aired Sunday night, Obama said, "We think that there had to be some sort of support network for bin Laden inside of Pakistan. But we don't know who or what that support network was."  

Meanwhile, Pakistani media aired the name of a man they said is the Central Intelligence Agency's station chief, prompting questions about whether the Pakistani government tried to out a CIA operative in the wake of the killing of  bin Laden. The U.S. is looking into the matter. According to The Wall Street Journal, the Islamabad station chief is one of the CIA's most critical and sensitive assignments. The position oversees the agency's covert programs, including the drone campaign that targets al Qaeda and Taliban leaders, as well as fighters who cross the border into Afghanistan. FULL POST