Children's Place Retail Stores (PLCE) is slightly higher this morning. One reason is that it announced a bevy of new executives.

The retailer announced Natalie Levy as Senior Vice President, Merchandising; Barrie Scardina as Senior Vice President, Planning an Allocation; Dina Sweeney as Senior Vice President, Outlets; and Larry McClure as Senior Vice President, Human Resources. This move is part of the company's initiative to control merchandise, optimize inventory management, and to improve the customer's outlet experience.

I have had my problem with Starbucks (SBUX) CEO Howard "Schultzie" Schultz in the past, but his latest little stunt has really ticked me off.

First things first, I will enjoy the occasional cup of Starbucks coffee, but the price has put a venti mocha-frappa-latte-chino out of my budget so I have started making my own at home. The company's product is good, but its competitors -- namely McDonald's (MCD) and Dunkin' Donuts -- offer a comparable product at a fraction of the price. I have long thought that Starbucks' saturation business model has been its biggest fault, with Schultzie's leadership running a close second.

The two circumstances sort of symbolize the U.S.'s decade of descent, although opinions certainly will vary on what led to them. At minimum, they don't represent the most flattering moment in the nation's history.

Money manager Bernard Madoff, if proven guilty, will have substantially hurt, if not ruined, the financial lives of hundreds of investors -- from charitable organizations to Zsa Zsa Gabor -- in a $50 billion Ponzi scheme.

Meanwhile, on the heels of President Barack Obama's $500,000 compensation cap for executives and employees who receive federal government bailout assistance, criticisms have been voiced in and around Wall Street and in think tanks, with some executives complaining that the compensation is not high enough and/or that the federal government has no right to limit how much someone can be paid.

Let us know what you think.

This post is part of a feature on companies and products that our bloggers think are in need of a makeover. See all 26.

You may have noticed, as I did, that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson seemed colossally uncomfortable during his testimony before Congress in September. Obviously, no one would enjoy jumping into Paulson's shoes and defending the merits of the government's $700-billion bailout bill to skeptical senators. However, the good Secretary's level of discomfort went up to 11 when the legislators began grilling him about the obscenely fat pay packages received by Wall Street CEOs -- even those who, you know, bankrupted their companies and stuff?

I can't blame Hank for breaking a sweat. Before he assumed the role of Treasury Secretary, Paulson was better known as the handsomely compensated CEO of Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS). To his credit, Goldman is one of the few titans of Wall Street still standing in the wake of the mortgage-backed securities mess. Although he managed not to drive his company into the ground, I'd argue that Paulson is not quite impartial enough to lead the charge for CEO pay reform.

On the other hand, I have never received a salary that could be described as "scandalous." Plus, I have a healthy amount of indignant rage regarding the pay packages scored by such Wall Street ne'er-do-wells as Richard Fuld of Lehman Brothers and Martin Sullivan of AIG (NYSE: AIG). With this arbitrary sense of entitlement, I feel more than qualified to suggest some new guidelines for executive pay.

This post was part of AOL Money & Finance's Best & Worst of 2007 feature. The voting has now closed and readers have chosen Google Inc. as the company of the year. Be sure and let us know in the comments if you are pleased with this result.

Corporate America, the markets, and Wall Street are lumbering through a so-so year -- one likely to be characterized by mediocre U.S. GDP and earnings performance, along with ample portions of market volatility.

To be sure, no one will confuse 2007 with a peak year during the "Roaring '20s" or even the "Roaring '90s." Still, there were several standout performances, which we summarize in our "Company of the Year" award.

Facebook

Facebook deserves an honorable mention. The online directory shows considerable promise as an online community and networking device. Provided information is kept confidential and is not released or sold to unauthorized third parties, the business model can serve as another meeting room for groups that might not otherwise be able to meet for geographic or other reasons.

For years, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs has slaved away at the company he founded for a measly $1 per year, plus a few shares of stock here and there. Not that I feel too badly for the guy ... when Forbes released its latest list of billionaires, Jobs ranked 132, with a net worth of $5.7 billion. He reportedly holds 5.5 million shares of AAPL stock, which currently hold a theoretical value of $907,000,000. And in 2000, Apple's board supplemented Jobs' $1 salary with a Gulfstream jet worth about $46 million.

Still ... a self-made man who could step out on his brainchild and draw a mammoth salary anywhere on Wall Street has stayed true to Apple and been instrumental in turning the company around. And continued to pay himself a negligible salary each year.

With the stock at an all-time high, iPhone and iPod sales continuing to trump estimates, and the Leopard operating system earning good marks, the company feels it may be time for a salary bump for Jobs. One section in Apple's annual report, filed yesterday, reads: "Because Mr. Jobs's continued leadership is critical to Apple, the Compensation Committee is considering additional compensation arrangements for him."

I doubt Jobs has any plans to go anywhere, but at least he's not being taken for granted.

Beth Gaston Moon is an analyst at Schaeffer's Investment Research.

The Wall Street Journal takes a look (subscription required) at a tough question involving corporate governance: Does the chaos that can ensue when a CEO is dumped (to say nothing of the big severance packages) often make it better to keep a marginal executive? As the cliche goes, the devil you know is better than the devil you don't.

While we can debate about whether boards are too slow or too quick to ditch wayward executives, there's no question that they've gotten a lot more proactive in recent years. To learn about the causes of this trend, and for analysis of what effect it will have on the long-term profitability of corporate America, check out Revolt in the Boardroom.

Given the supine role that boards have generally played throughout history, it's tempting to see any shift toward a greater willingness to fire people as a good thing. But at some point, trigger-happiness could make executives too short-sighted and stock-price oriented (sagging stock prices generally attract the ire of activist hedge funds).

But I would argue that we are a long, long way from that point. There are still many, many more incompetent executives who should be fired than great executives who were unjustly given the ax.

Michael C. Jensen, a business professor, consultant, and speaker, was one of the early advocates of the larger-than-life compensation packages that have now become the standard fare of boardrooms everywhere.

But now he's revising his thinking in his upcoming book C.E.O Pay and What to Do About It. Now Jensen wants boards to be tougher in negotiating pay packages with executives. But according to The New York Times, not everyone is buying it:

"Imposing the constraints that Michael Jensen has in mind," said Margaret Blair, a professor at Vanderbilt Law School and a specialist in corporate governance, "runs contrary to the culture that has emerged in boardrooms over the last 20 years. Mr. Jensen himself is partly responsible for that culture."

Mr. Jensen complains that too many executives are being paid for breathing, rather than for performance. Furthermore even an incompetent and, in many cases, unethical executive can't be fired without a big severance package.

His proposals make a lot of sense, even if they seem unlikely to ever take hold. I eagerly await his book, as I think bad corporate governance is one of the most serious threats to American business today.

In light of an unprecedented level of criticism being leveled at executive pay packages, companies are coming forward with greater disclosures about how they pay their executives. But according to the Sunday New York Times's terrific look at executive pay, it may be too much, and yet not enough:

Inclusion of new data, like the value of retirement benefits and potential severance payouts, was supposed to paint a fuller picture of everything that an executive could make. Disclosure of such things as the performance criteria used to award lucrative bonuses was supposed to make the pay-setting process clearer. And the addition of a single headline number that tallied up all the elements of annual compensation was supposed to make different executive pay packages easier to compare. But while all the new disclosure rules have resulted in far more information, analysts say they still do not necessarily offer greater insight.

As reported in the Red Herring, Dell (NASDAQ (GS):DELL) CEO Kevin Rollins may be made to exit the company in the face of trying times. The report casts no blame on Rollins in particular. In fact, the article is tacitly defensive of him while still expressing that there are issues at Dell that Rollins has allowed to get out of control. It should noted that CEO Rollins has remained steady at the helm while many of the individuals beneath him have left the company in search of a new vessel. It is rumored that many of them have found sanctuary at Hewlett Packard (NYSE: HPQ). I find this indicative of a pattern that has become much too familiar, where a management team runs a good company onto the rocks and then seeks higher ground.

Dell had returned earnings beyond expectations at its last quarterly report. This is believed to have bought some time for Kevin Rollins, but has it given him a reprieve? The analysts aren't saying so. Share holders are expecting something that can be termed a "turn around" for the company. I think possibly a few impatient people are expecting too much too soon.

We have yet to see any big and bold adjustments to the way Dell does business. There seems to be some particular disdain building for Dell's unrelenting grip on their tried and true customer direct marketing approach. I think they had better keep doing business that way because it worked very well in the first place and made Dell what they are today. I agree with many people who say that Dell needs to create a new spin and to find ways to invigorate growth. But in my opinion, they had better not just blow out the old marketing plan just to try something new.

We'll see how the SEC investigation into Dell's accounting and reporting practices goes. We'll see if any of those executives who have fled the company will be made to answer for company ills. We'll see if the investors decide to give Kevin Rollins more time to adjust. Personally I hope they do.

This post is written as part of AOL Money & Finance's Best & Worst 2006. Cast your vote for the most overused buzzword.

On election night, CNN had a gaggle of pundits and bloggers opining about the Democratic takeover of the U.S. House and Senate. Among the throng was a journalist from Newsweek. That was amazing. On election night, a time when CNN gets big ratings, the Time Warner (NYSE:TWX)-owned network turned to someone who works for a publication that is a fierce rival of its own Time magazine. It makes one wonder, whatever happened to corporate synergies?

Executives repeated that phrase ad nauseam during the go-go 90s. I always got the impression that big investors took these estimates with a grain -- make that a truckload -- of salt. Synergy was the main selling point of the Time Warner-AOL merger. Then, the word took off in various spellings, including the utility Cinergy, now a part of Duke Energy (NYSE:DUK). There's Corporate Synergies, a benefits consulting company based in New Jersey, and Idaho-based Provider Synergies, which manages company spending on drugs.

The catch phrase resurfaced this year when General Motors Corporation (NYSE:GM) mulled over an alliance with Renault SA and Nissan Motor Corp. Bloomberg News reported that "GM had figured an alliance would cut its purchasing costs by $1 billion to $2 billion; the Renault estimate was much higher, a person familiar with the talks said."

US Airways (NYSE:LCC) estimated that it could get "actual savings" of $1.65 billion over two years by taking over rival Delta Air Lines, Inc. Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) pointed out in its press release announcing the YouTube deal that the video sharing site "will operate independently to preserve its successful brand and passionate community." It will be interesting to see if everyone remains a happy Google family in the coming years.

Jonathan Berr is the editor of http://www.desperateinvestors.com.

As mama to two unruly and willful little boys and possessor of a fairly good temper, I struggle with the advice from experts re: spanking. "They" say that spanking "slows mental development and hinders achievement." Naturally "they" are not saying such things while faced with a four-year-old who looks you right in the eyes and throws his Percy the tank engine toy at his baby brother's head. Anyway.

The experts are up in arms because of a statistically insignificant survey released claiming that most CEOs were spanked as children. In other news, most CEOs were raised in the 40s, 50s and 60s. File that one away in the "do you understand the relationship between cause and effect?" cabinet.

While I look hard to find the reason USA Today felt it necessary to release this bit of trivia as "news," I'm nonetheless interested in the whole topic. And I'm wondering: should we reinstate spanking for CEOs? No, not as a parenting tactic for future CEOs (my son breathes a sigh of relief), but as a measure to reign in some of the bad behavior of CEOs in the boardroom today.

If they're going to act like children, why not treat them as such? Maybe a good wooden spoon hanging over the conference table at Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE:HPQ) might have kept Patricia Dunn from listening to that feasibility study on whether planting spies at the Wall Street Journal was a good idea. Or could it have dissuaded Steve Jobs from accepting the plan to back-date stock options at Apple Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)? Maybe if Sumner Redstone was afraid of a good strapping he'd reduce his salary at Viacom, Inc. (NYSE:VIA) a bit more.

It's at least worth a try!