Resurrection of the "Greedy Executive"

Amid all the gloom about the unemployment rate -- the loss of half a million jobs last month alone, with plenty more coming since then -- there might be some opportunity ahead in the field of corporate image-polishing.

Judging by the (admittedly unscientific) number of times that the phrase "greedy executives" or its equivalent appears in the news media, there is a lot of work to be done to restore the reputations of people in corner offices.

Through this morning, the number of citations captured by Lexis Nexis was approaching 1,000 this year, with more than three weeks (and endless year-end reviews) to come. That's more than double last year's total of 490 mentions and well above the annual average of 432 citations over the last two decades.

Still, it's well below the 1,662 mentions racked up in 2002, a year when the aftermath of the popped tech bubble combined with Enron, WorldCom, and other megascandals to sour the public mood toward business leaders.

by Mark Stein