WHO needs a bailout?

Certainly not the former CEO of Washington Mutual. If you want a prime example of how bloated these corporations are, Alan Fishman is your guy:

Fishman was the new chief executive officer for Washingon Mutual — WaMu — the nation's largest savings and loan, which was taken over Thursday night by federal bank regulators and quickly dumped in a fire sale to JPMorgan Chase for the Wal-Mart-like price of $1.9 billion.

But don't cry for Fishman, who reportedly was sky-high — literally — last night, on a flight from New York to Seattle, when WaMu collapsed. Even though he's only been on the job for less than three weeks, he's bailing out with parachute worth close to $20 million, according to an executive compensation analysis conducted for the New York Times by James F. Reda Associates.

Fishman, hired on Sept. 7, had a base annual salary of $1,000,000 which, for his three weeks on the job equates to about $60,000 before taxes. His target annual bonus was 365% of his salary, or $3.65 million. And if Fishman has to pay taxes because of any severance he receives as a result of the takeover, then the company would also cover those taxes.

Fishman's sign-on cash bonus was $7.5 million as well as 612,500 shares of WaMu, which are now virtually worthless. If Fishman is terminated without "cause" - such as the loss of a job due to a takeover of the firm - than he would receive a lump severance payment of $6.15 million. This figure is 2.5 times his base salary of $1 million plus the maximum bonus of $3.65 million. When you add up his salary, the possible bonuses and the lump sum payment, Fishman could walk away with more than $18 million.

I'm applying for every CEO job I can find available first thing on Monday Morning. I'm pretty sure that if people like George Bush and Carly Fiorino can run perfectly good companies into the ground, I . . can. . .too!