No respect

I am beyond surprised, I am appalled at the compensation that many executives receive. I've been aware for awhile that this excessive compensation goes on, and they get away with it because no one on the board stops it. Nor do the shareholders. Companies lay off workers because one of the biggest costs that a company has is salaries/wages paid to employees. But these laid off people are the ones making under $100k, how many of these workers could be kept on by eliminating excessive compensation.
This appalling situation has really been spotlighted by the bailouts of these large companies. I worked at AIG for a very short while. They are using their bailout money to keep up their rich life style and those of their top earners. But... those same executives are the ones who screwed things up in the first place. In the more normal world where most of us live we would lose our jobs, income, for screwing up not get financial reward in spite of our screw ups. And we are not talking about just millions of dollars but billions.
What the F?