Wallace Malone is retiring as vice chairman from Wachovia Corporation with a sweet and juicy departure package worth at least $135 million. This amount probably will be increased (grossed up) so the poor fellow will not have to fret over paying any income tax on the $135. Incredible, even for doing a good job, though one arguably could make a moral case for such a payment. But what about those who fail?

What about the story from Walt Disney's Magic Kingdom and Michael Eisner, the former CEO who once encouraged the potential payment of a $140 million golden parachute for Michael Ovitz, his friend who lasted just 14 months as his deputy? Eisner himself was forced out left last year with a package worth nearly $24 million excluding a $300,000 annuity for life. In fact, most severance packages of this nature also contain a dazzling array of other sweet benefits--everything from use of private corporate jets to lucrative consulting contracts, use of secretaries to office space for life, country club memberships to financial planning help. There are limitless goodies executives seem to enjoy in "forced retirement" at the expense of shareholders.

Ever-increasing severance packages granted to terminated or otherwise departing executives (which are negotiated into employment contracts upfront) are a part of the growing perception that total compensatory reward is out of sync with performance, or lack thereof. After all, if it is immoral to punish large corporations (like Wal-Mart) for their financial success, it should be equally immoral to unduly reward the top executives of such corporations when they are terminated for poor performance.

What about Stephen C. Hilbert, the former CEO of Conseco, who almost drove that company into bankruptcy but was given $47.1 million in severance for his efforts? Pity Carly Fiorina who left Hewlett-Packard with a tarnished reputation. Fortunately her exit package eased her pain; it was worth about $21 million. "This is nothing beyond the normal severance we give to senior executives," says HP company spokesman Mike Moeller. How sweet is that? Doug Ivester, former chairman of Coca-Cola, left under a similar dark cloud, but to bring in a some sunshine, his severance approached a sweet $120 million. Poor Jill Barad, former CEO of Mattel, departed with $55 million after being fired for her poor performance. Robert Annunziata left the CEO post of Global Crossing in just one year with $15.9 million. L. Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco and New Hampshire infamy was on schedule to get as much as $117 million before he was indicted and convicted for corporate wrongdoing. Incredibly, Tyco agreed to pay a severance package of $44.8 million to Mark Swartz, its former chief financial officer, even while he was under investigation by a grand jury in New York that later indicted him on criminal charges (Drury, Jim, "It Pays to Fail," Sept. 16, 2002, www.chiefexecutive.net). The agreement, by the way, was signed by two members of Tyco's compensation committee, one of whom was Stephen W. Foss, former chairman of the N.H. Port Authority, who later ran into his own serious problems of wrongdoing (Feingold, Jeff, "In the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time," N.H. Business Review, Oct. 17, 2002, 14b).

Franklin Raines was forced out as Fannie Mae's chief executive after only five years but will receive a pension of $1.3 million a year for life for his poor performance, though the payment is being disputed. Nice pension for just five years of work. N.Y. Stock Exchange chairman Richard Grasso "resigned" on Sept. 17, 2005, at an emergency meeting of the NYSE Board, which voted for his ouster. The forced resignation came only three weeks after the same board disclosed their earlier pay out of $140 million in deferred compensation and retirement benefits to Grasso, at that time praising him for his