NYSE Chairman Should Keep His Money--And Be Proud of It
By Larry Benson (New York Post, Sept. 14, 2003; Chicago Tribune, Sept. 17, 2003)

The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is a private business, even if heavily regulated; and what the owners pay their chairman, Richard Grasso, is no one's business but theirs.

Motivating the complaints about Grasso's compensation is the Marxist notion that all property is collectively owned--as if those who own not a red cent of NYSE stock somehow have a right to tell the owners what to do with their private property.

Another mistaken Marxist notion is that property is a zero-sum commodity, i.e., if Grasso gets $188 million, it comes out of everybody's pocket. But those millions come out of the private pockets of the NYSE owners, not anybody else's.

The most disturbing aspect of this public lynching of private property is that Grasso, like Jack Welch a year ago, has now caved in to the mob and agreed to forgo millions "to quell the controversy." The reprehensible thing about this whole issue is not the amount of money Grasso will get, but the lack of moral courage exhibited by people like Grasso and Welch. Such cowardice hastens the day when we will all be forced to live by the Marxist mantra: "all property is theft."