In his funny little book A Weekend with Warren Buffett and Other Shareholder Meeting Adventures, Randy Cepuch travels around the country attending shareholder meetings and reaches a disturbing conclusion: the idea of shareholder democracy is "pretty much a myth."

Institutional Shareholder Services founder and revered shareholder activist Robert A.G. Monks reached the same conclusion a long time ago, and he's mad as hell about it.

His book Corpocracy is, in the words of Paula Gordon, "a very, very important book," and I would strongly recommend it to every shareholder who worries about corporate governance issues in this country.

Today, far too many public companies are run for the benefit of a cadre of top executives, and institutional money managers, who have a fiduciary responsibility to take action when managers and directors are not responsible stewards of shareholder capital, are letting it happen.

Executive compensation has turned into a complete joke, totally divorced from any relationship to the free market or corporate performance.

The influence of The Business Roundtable and the managerial elite has also taken control in Washington, and time is running out for shareholders to take back their companies and their country.

Monks believes it can be fixed, and he has a good strategy for fixing it -- Buy his book.

Book Review: Robert Monks' 'Corpocracy' originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 17 Jan 2008 17:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.