Google Pays Founders $1; Four Other Execs Get $124M

Michael Nagle/Getty ImagesGoogle founders Sergey Brin, left, and Larry Page speak at a 2008 press conference in New York. By MICHAEL LIEDTKE

SAN FRANCISCO — Google CEO Larry Page and his longtime partner Sergey Brin limited their salaries to $ 1 apiece last year, while four other top executives received combined compensation packages totaling more than $ 124 million.

The breakdown disclosed in a regulatory filing Wednesday consisted mostly of stock awards that could ultimately be worth more or less money, depending on how Google’s stock price fares in the future. Google Inc. (GOOG) also paid all four of the executives besides Page and Brin their maximum bonuses to reward them for their accomplishments during a year that saw the Internet search leader’s stock price and earnings rise by 10 percent from 2011.

Page and Brin, who co-founded Google in 1998, have capped their salaries to $ 1 since the company went public in 2004. It’s a symbolic gesture that other top Silicon Valley executives such as Apple Inc.’s (AAPL) late CEO Steve Jobs, and Yahoo Inc. co-founder Jerry Yang have made after amassing fortunes through the stock that they held in their respective companies.

Page, 40, and Brin, 39, are Google’s two biggest stockholders, with stakes that are each currently worth about $ 20 billion.

Meanwhile, other Google executives are still looking to build their fortunes.

Last year’s biggest windfall went to Nikesh Arora, who oversees the advertising sales that generated most of Google’s $ 50 billion in revenue last year.

Arora’s compensation package was valued at $ 46.7 million, including $ 10.8 million cash bonus to supplement his $ 650,000 salary. The bonus included an $ 8 million discretionary payment that was boosted by a decision to cancel some of Arora’s stock awards in exchange for $ 4.7 million in cash, according to the Google proxy statement inviting shareholders to the company’s June 6 annual meeting at its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters.

Arora’s pay last year more than doubled from $ 23.2 million in 2011.

Patrick Pichette, Google’s chief financial officer, and David Drummond, the company’s top lawyer, both received hefty raises, too. Pichette’s compensation package was valued at $ 38.7 million, more than doubling from $ 18.3 million in the previous year. Drummond’s pay climbed 71 percent to $ 31.3 million last year.

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt’s compensation plunged last year after the company gave him stock valued at nearly $ 94 million in 2011 in appreciation of his decade-long stint as CEO.

When Page took over as CEO two years ago, Schmidt accepted the company’s offer to raise his salary from $ 1 to $ 1.25 million. Including a $ 6 million bonus and other perquisites, Schmidt’s compensation last year was valued at $ 7.6 million. That was a 92 percent decline from his $ 101 million package in 2011.

Schmidt is in the process of selling up to 3.2 million shares of Google stock this year. As of April 8, he owned about 6.9 million shares of Google stock, down from 7.6 million shares at the end of last year. His remaining stake in Google is worth about $ 5.6 billion, based on Wednesday’s closing price of $ 813.45 for the company’s stock.

The Associated Press formula calculates an executive’s total compensation by adding salary, bonuses, perks, above-market interest that the company pays on deferred compensation and the estimated value of stock and stock options awarded during the year.

DailyFinance.com

Google Pays Founders $1; Four Other Execs Get $124M

Tom and Norm Saturday 3

FBI Interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev In Early 2011: Suspects" Mother Claims FBI Set Up

Yesterday we reported that the initial, and largely expected, response by the father of the Boston bombing suspects, Anzor Tsarnaev, was that they had been set up by US secret services. As RT reported further, in an interview with Russian television the brothers’ father Anzor Tsarnaev also claimed that they are innocent and somebody might have set them up. “I’m sure about my children, in their purity. I don’t know what happened and who did this.  God knows and he will punish them,” he told Zvezda channel. “Somebody might have set them up. I don’t know who and because of their cowardice killed the boy.”

The father said he was unable to contact his sons or other relatives. “Everything is switched off. I can’t reach my brother there either. I can’t reach anyone! I just want information. Now I fear for my boy, that they will now shoot him dead and then will say ‘He had a gun’.”

“I fear for my son, for his life. They should arrest him, bring him, but alive. Justice should investigate who is right and who is wrong,” he said.

Mr Tsarnaev recently spoke to his elder son, Tamerlan [Suspect #1], telling him that he should take care of his younger brother. Speaking of the Boston marathon bombing he told his son “Ok, Thanks to Allah you were not close to there and did not suffer.”

“I remember I even asked “Who could do something like that?”

“We just talked. I asked him about our Dzhokhar [Suspect #2], how was he. I told him, he should help him out and keep an eye on him, so that he studies well. I told him ‘You left school, got married too early, but the kid should finish [his education]’. Because this is life – those who don’t study work a lot and work hard. That’s why I was telling them study”.

* * *

As said up front: largely an expected reaction of shock and initial denial that one’s children ended up behaving in a less than anticipated fashion. So it was not unexpected that the mother also decided to go the conspiracy route, and allege the boys conduct was “set up” and that the FBI had been following them for years.

Again from RT:

Zubeidat Tsarnaeva maintains her younger son is innocent and like so many of the brothers’ acquaintances, claims they were good, courteous kids and model students – especially the younger 19-year-old Dzhokhar. A US citizen who is presently in the Russian Republic of Dagestan, she revealed to RT some suspicions of her own.

 

Grief-stricken at the latest developments in the case, Zubeidat expressed her dismay at the allegations, recounting Dzhokhar’s life in the US and talking of his status among his peers and friends: he was an honors student, loved by many of his friends and teachers. And his older brother Tamerlan was a star athlete and student, whose ambition was to one day appear on the US Olympic wrestling team.

 

But her biggest suspicion surrounding the case was the constant FBI surveillance she said her family was subjected to over the years. She is surprised that having been so stringent with the entire family, the FBI had no idea the sons were supposedly planning a terrorist act.

 

“They used to come [to our] home, they used to talk to me…they were telling me that he [the older, 26-y/o Tamerlan] was really an extremist leader and that they were afraid of him. They told me whatever information he is getting, he gets from these extremist sites… they were controlling him, they were controlling his every step…and now they say that this is a terrorist act! Never ever is this true, my sons are innocent!”

 

When asked if maybe she didn’t know about some of her sons’ more secret aspirations and dark secrets, she said “That’s impossible. My sons would never keep a secret.”

 

Finally, she said that if she could speak to her youngest – Dzhokhar, she would tell him, “Save your life and tell the truth, that you haven’t done anything, that this is a set up!”

A clip of the above:

More deranged appeals to some conspiracy theory involving the FBI? Possibly.

But then we learn that the FBI did indeed interview Tamerlan nearly two years ago. From AP:

A foreign government told the FBI in early 2011 about information that Tamerlan Tsarnaev (tsahr-NEYE’-ehv), one of the brothers suspected in the Boston Marathon bombings, was a follower of radical Islam.

 

Tamerlan Tsarnaev died in a shootout, and his younger brother was captured alive. They were identified by authorities and relatives as ethnic Chechens from southern Russia who had been in the U.S. for about a decade.

 

According to FBI, the foreign government said that based on its information, Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a strong believer and that he had changed drastically since 2010 as he prepared to leave the U.S. for travel to the country’s region to join unspecified underground groups.

 

The FBI says it interviewed Tsarnaev and relatives, and did not find any domestic or foreign terrorism activity.

It did? Because suddenly questions emerge:

• What did the FBI inquiry involve?


• What unspecified “underground groups”?


• Have the same “underground groups” recruited more young people from Boston or neighboring cities?


• Who made the decision to absolve Tamerlan of any suspicion?


• Which “foreign government” demanded that the US FBI get involved in the life of a then 24 year old boy and under what pretext?


• Also, and unrelated, why were both parents abroad?

Dead men tell not tales, and Tamerlan is now permanently muted, so it is the FBI’s word, as secret as it may, be against that of a dead man.

As for his brother: one wonders how quickly will he recuperate, or will his serious (or critical as was reported by Bloomberg) condition in hosptial suddenly deteriorate to a condition of just as terminal silence, thus tying up all the loose ends?

Zero Hedge

FBI Interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev In Early 2011: Suspects" Mother Claims FBI Set Up

Summary Estimates for Multinational Companies, 2011

Summary Estimates for Multinational Companies:
Employment, Sales, and Capital Expenditures for 2011

The following are 2011 advance and 2010 revised summary estimates of the employment, capital expenditures, and sales activity of U.S. multinational companies (comprising both their U.S. and foreign operations) and the corresponding activity of foreign multinational companies in the United States. Preliminary 2011 and revised 2010 statistics based on more complete source data and including country and industry detail will be released later this year.¹

U.S. multinational companies: U.S. and foreign operations

Worldwide employment by U.S. multinational companies (MNCs) increased 1.5 percent in 2011 to 34.5 million workers, with the increase primarily reflecting increases abroad. In the United States, employment by U.S. parent companies increased 0.1 percent to 22.9 million workers, compared with a 1.8 percent increase in total private-industry employment in the United States.² The total employment by U.S. parents accounted for roughly one-fifth of total U.S. employment in private industries. Abroad, employment by majority-owned foreign affiliates of U.S. MNCs increased 4.4 percent to 11.7 million workers.

Worldwide capital expenditures by U.S. MNCs increased 16.7 percent in 2011 to $ 706 billion. Capital expenditures in the United States by U.S. parent companies increased 17.1 percent to $ 514 billion. Capital expenditures abroad by their majority-owned foreign affiliates increased 15.4 percent to $ 192 billion. As shown in table 1, capital expenditures have varied widely in recent years.

Sales by U.S. parent companies increased 9.4 percent in 2011 to $ 10,696 billion. Sales by their majority-owned foreign affiliates increased 15.8 percent to $ 5,985 billion.³

Because the growth in employment of U.S. parent companies was not as strong as the growth in employment of majority-owned foreign affiliates, the U.S. parent share of worldwide employment of U.S. MNCs fell nearly 1 percentage point in 2011 to 66 percent (table 2 and chart 1). The U.S.-parent share of worldwide capital expenditures of U.S. MNCs in 2011 was 73 percent, a share that was little changed from 2010.

Changes in the share of MNC activity at the U.S. parent do not necessarily indicate production shifting between U.S. parents and their foreign affiliates. Other factors that may be associated with changes in the share include different rates of economic growth in the United States and in specific markets where investment is occurring abroad, or the creation of new market opportunities abroad that cannot be served by exports from the United States. These issues are discussed in annual articles on U.S. MNC operations in the Survey of Current Business.⁴

¹2010 preliminary statistics with country and industry detail are available on BEA’s Web site.
² Statistics for total U.S private-industry employment are from BEA’s national income and product accounts, table 6.4D: Full-Time and Part-Time Employees by Industry (see http://www.bea.gov/iTable/index_nipa.cfm).
³ An MNC-wide total for sales is not provided because it would contain duplication resulting from transactions among and within MNCs.
⁴ See “U.S. Multinational Companies: Operations of U.S. Parents and Their Foreign Affiliates in 2010” in the November 2012 issue of the Survey. Additional discussion of data and analytical considerations may be found in “A Note on Patterns of Production and Employment by U.S. Multinational Companies,” in the March 2004 issue of the Survey.

Foreign multinational companies: U.S. operations

Employment in the United States by majority-owned U.S. affiliates of foreign MNCs rose 3.3 percent, to 5.6 million workers, in 2011, a rate of increase higher than the 1.8 percent increase in total U.S. private-industry employment in 2011. U.S. affiliates accounted for 5.0 percent of U.S. private-industry employment in 2011, one-tenth of a percentage point higher than in 2010.

Capital expenditures by U.S. affiliates rose 12.3 percent in 2011 to $ 173 billion. Sales by U.S. affiliates rose 11.9 percent in 2011 to $ 3,491 billion.

Changes in the measures of activity of majority-owned U.S. affiliates of foreign companies may reflect a variety of factors, including changes in the operations of existing affiliates as well as entries to and exits from the universe of majority-owned U.S. affiliates.  For example, the increase in employment was due in part to acquisitions made by existing U.S. affiliates and the entry of new majority-owned affiliates.

Revisions

The MNC statistics for 2010 presented in this release supersede preliminary statistics that were released in the second half of 2012. For U.S. parent companies, the levels shown in table 1 for 2010 represent upward revisions of 0.1 percent for employment, 0.2 percent for capital expenditures, and less than 0.1 percent for sales. For majority-owned foreign affiliates, the levels shown represent an upward revision of 0.9 percent for employment, a downward revision of less than 0.1 percent for capital expenditures, and an upward revision of less than 0.1 percent for sales. For majority-owned U.S. affiliates of foreign MNCs, the levels shown in table 3 for 2010 represent upward revisions of 3.1 percent for employment, 3.4 percent for capital expenditures, and 1.1 percent for sales.

* * *

TECHNICAL NOTE

Each year, the Bureau of Economic Analysis releases advance summary statistics of employment, sales, and capital expenditures by U.S. parent companies, by their foreign affiliates, and by U.S. affiliates of foreign MNCs. Statistics based on more complete source data, including country and industry detail, will be released later this year.

The statistics presented in this release were constructed from data collected by BEA in two distinct surveys of MNC operations: (1) a survey of U.S. MNCs that covers the operations of both U.S. parent companies and their foreign affiliates, and (2) a survey of the operations of U.S. affiliates of foreign MNCs.

A U.S. parent company may itself be foreign-owned, so there is some overlap between the data on U.S. parent companies and on U.S. affiliates; thus, to avoid duplication, data on U.S. parents and U.S. affiliates should not be added together to produce U.S. totals.

The statistics presented here pertain to U.S. parent companies and their majority-owned foreign affiliates, and to majority-owned U.S. affiliates of foreign MNCs. Statistics on all U.S. and foreign affiliates, including affiliates that are not majority owned, will be released by BEA later this year. In these series, “affiliates” are defined as businesses in which an investor of another country holds at least 10-percent voting ownership. For 2010, foreign affiliates that were not majority-owned employed 2.2 million workers, and U.S. affiliates that were not majority-owned employed 0.5 million workers.

For both U.S. MNCs and U.S. affiliates of foreign MNCs, employment covers the total number of full-time and part-time employees on the payroll at the end of the year. Sales cover gross sales minus returns, allowances and discounts, or gross operating revenues. Capital expenditures cover total expenditures on property, plant, and equipment (that is, expenditures for land and depreciable structures and equipment); they are gross of any sales, retirements, or transfers of previously owned tangible assets. Capital expenditures include spending for equipment that is leased or rented to others, which in some industries—such as automotive equipment rental and leasing—can be very large. The value of sales, retirements, or transfers in these industries can be very large.

In addition to presenting data collected directly in its surveys of MNC operations, BEA uses data collected on costs incurred and profits earned in production to estimate the value added of U.S. parent companies, of majority-owned foreign affiliates, and of majority-owned U.S. affiliates of foreign companies. Value added, which is not discussed in this release, is an important measure of MNC activity that indicates the contribution of parents or affiliates to gross domestic product in the United States or in foreign host countries. The latest statistics for the value added are for 2010 and are available on BEA’s website at http://www.bea.gov/iTable/index_MNC.cfm.

* * *

U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis

Summary Estimates for Multinational Companies, 2011

55% of Americans Say Their Income Taxes are Fair; 46.6% Paid No Income Tax in 2011

The percentage of Americans who think their income tax is fair has fallen to 55%, the lowest level since 2001 according to a recent Gallup Poll on Income Tax Fairness.

Gallup’s history of asking this question stretches back to the 1940s. From 1943 through 1945, during World War II, few Americans complained about their taxes, with an average of 87% of Americans saying their taxes were fair. That dropped down to an average of 61% in 1946, the first year after the war.

Gallup resurrected the question in the late 1990s, when an average 48% said their income taxes were fair, including the historical low of 45% in 1999. Americans’ views of their taxes as fair improved from 51% in 2001 to 58% in 2002, shortly after the Bush administration put into place a round of tax cuts.

46.4% Pay No Income Tax

According to the Tax Policy Institute 46.4% paid no income tax in 2011.

The Gallup question specifically stated “Do you regard the income tax you will have to pay this year is fair?” It did not ask if the system was fair.

If those who pay no income tax think their zero share is fair (and logically they should), then a mere 16% of those who do pay taxes think their share is fair.

Here is my math: 55% think their share is fair. Subtract the 46.4% who pay nothing (and logically should be happy about that),  the net is 8.6 percentage points. (8.6 / 53.6) * 100 = 16%

I wonder if some people who pay no income taxes misunderstood the question and said taxes were unfair because they want those who do pay taxes to pay more. Perhaps some of those who pay nothing, want more money back.

Bear in mind that most of those who pay no income tax still pay property taxes, sales taxes, and payroll taxes (Social Security and Medicare). So, perhaps some of those who said their zero share was “unfair” do not realize they pay no income tax.

For more on who pays and who doesn’t, How Stuff Works answers the question Is it true that only 53 percent of Americans pay income tax?

Here is the answer in a nutshell: The top 20 percent of Americans earn 53.4 percent of the total U.S. income, but pay 67.2 percent of total income tax.

Is that fair? Are your taxes fair?

Mike “Mish” Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Mike “Mish” Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.

Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis

55% of Americans Say Their Income Taxes are Fair; 46.6% Paid No Income Tax in 2011

Planned layoffs fall in March, but worst quarter since 2011

People wait in line to meet a job recruiter at the UJA-Federation Connect to Care job fair in New York March 6, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Shannon Stapleton

Reuters: Business News

Planned layoffs fall in March, but worst quarter since 2011

Bullard says low inflation gives Fed room to keep easing

President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis James Bullard poses during an interview at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis June 8, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Peter Newcomb

Reuters: Economic News

Bullard says low inflation gives Fed room to keep easing

Report: Big Okla. quake in 2011 likely man-made

WASHINGTON (AP) — An unusual and widely felt 5.6-magnitude quake in Oklahoma in 2011 was probably caused when oil drilling waste was pushed deep underground, a team of university and federal scientists concluded.
Business Headlines

Report: Big Okla. quake in 2011 likely man-made

Virginia breaks streak with largest revenue drop since Dec. 2011

WASHINGTON, March 13 | Wed Mar 13, 2013 3:34pm EDT

WASHINGTON, March 13 (Reuters) – Virginia broke a four-month streak of revenue gains in February and posted a 2 percent decline compared with the same month in 2012, the largest drop since December 2011, Virginia’s governor said on Wednesday.

“While overall economic indicators continue a trend of progress and recovery, this month’s decline in revenue reminds us that our future economic growth is still insecure and uncertain,” said Governor Bob McDonnell in a statement. “Virginia continues to fare better than neighboring states.”

For more than a year and a half, Virginia has mostly posted monthly gains in revenues. Revenues have dropped only three other times since July 2011. In December 2011, it posted a decline of 4.7 percent. There were also drops of 0.7 percent in September and 0.4 percent in June.

Those declines compare to the 19.5 percent spike in January, which followed a 4.9 percent rise in December.

Virginia is especially vulnerable to the federal spending cuts known as sequestration because of the military presence in the state as well as heavy federal spending on procurement and salaries. Its proximity to the U.S. capital, though, also helped the state emerge from the 2007-09 recession faster than others.

Secretary of Finance Ric Brown in a letter to the governor warned that “February is not generally a significant month for revenue collections.” Also, last February occurred in a leap year, and the extra day helped boost revenue growth 17.2 percent, he said.

The decrease in February 2013 from the year before was driven by a 5.7 percent drop in collections of payroll tax withholding, which would have been affected by the loss of a day for making deposits, according to Brown. Withholding taxes provide 63 percent of the state’s general fund revenues.

Sales taxes, which support 20 percent of the general fund, were up 10.3 percent.

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Reuters: Bonds News

Virginia breaks streak with largest revenue drop since Dec. 2011