Thus, last year Mr Weldon’s total compensation was $19,847,026. Such an amount ought to pay for a vast amount of responsibility and accountability. Also, the total compensation of Ms C.A. Goggins, the Worldwide Chairman of the Consumer Group, who I presume to the the executive just below the CEO who is responsible for products made by the factory which had to be closed, was $5,345,737.

Johnson & Johnson’s Bill Weldon – CEO Pay
FiercePharma
By Maureen Martino
May 11, 2009 

Bill Weldon – Johnson & Johnson

Total Compensation: $29.4M

Details: Weldon, who came in second in year’s CEO pay report, once again pulled down one of the largest paychecks in Big Pharma. His earnings were down slightly from his $30.6M haul in 2007, due primarily in a drop in option awards from $7.6M to $4.2M.

Weldon’s other compensation totaled $184,165, which included personal use J&J’s [$154,045]; car and driver for commutation and other personal transportation [$26,595]; executive dining room meals; and home security system monitoring fees. It was reported earlier this year that Weldon turned down a merit-pay increase in his base salary for 2009. The compensation committee had offered him the increase, but Weldon recommended that his base salary remain at $1.8 million.

Who Will Be Accountable for a Company in Disarray?

Johnson and Johnson was one of the most trusted names in health care for a long time, perhaps partially because of its forthright response to the apparently external contamination of its Tylenol products in the 1980s. Now it appears to be a company in disarray, battered by numerous recalls of apparently contaminated, adulterated, or defective products, both drugs and devices, allegations that its conventional management wisdom lead to these quality and safety problems, and now with at least one key senior manager leaving.

All that went wrong is not exactly clear yet. Clearly, however, top managers, and the board of directors to whom they report ought to be accountable. Here is where we return to the case of University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman. She is, after all, well-paid to be a director of Johnson and Johnson. Therefore, she ought to be accountable for the type of people hired as top managers, and the general direction of their management. She ought to be accountable for letting Johnson and Johnson CEO William Weldon and consumer products head Colleen Goggins continue in office, and receive outsized compensation… She also ought to be accountable for the general thrust of their management, including excess cost-cutting, seeking mergers without clear plans for assimilating them, and putting people who did not understand pharmaceuticals in charge of pharmaceutical production.

^{… The early Christian movement largely spread amongst the urban business-classes in the first few centuries; they were a band of shop-keepers, traders and small businessmen. Callistus, who was later designated Pope Callixtus I had a career as a slave in charge of a bank which apparently failed. At this time, it seems clear that the Christian communities were not totally opposed to earning a reasonable living by taking interest; money changing must produce some profit if it is to succeed as a business, and Callistus’ Christian clients undoubtedly expected some return for their deposits.}

^{Before 313 A.D., the Christian communities were largely confined to the urban business class. By the 4th century, Constantine’s legislation created the Catholic Church. Many pre-313 A.D. religious sects – commonly lumped together under the rubric "Gnostics" – were aggressively hunted down and their texts were destroyed. The Catholic Church now embraced all the social classes within it. As for general social conditions, the rich who were in a position to take advantage of the situation became the money-lenders when the ever-increasing tax demands in the last declining days of the Empire crippled and eventually destroyed the peasant class by reducing tenant-farmers to serfdom. It was only too evident that usury meant exploitation of the poor.}

^{The First Council of Nicaea in 325, forbade clergy from engaging in usury [canon 17]. At the time "usury" simply mean interest of any kind, and the canon merely forbade the clergy to lend money on interest above one per cent per month. Later ecumenical councils applied this regulation to the laity.}

^{Lateran III decreed that persons who accepted interest on loans could receive neither the sacraments nor Christian burial.[8] Pope Clement V made the belief in the right to usury a heresy in 1311, and abolished all secular legislation which allowed it.[9] Pope Sixtus V condemned the practice of charging interest as "detestable to God and man, damned by the sacred canons and contrary to Christian charity."}

^{Theological historian John Noonan argues that "the doctrine [of usury] was enunciated by popes, expressed by three ecumenical councils, proclaimed by bishops, and taught unanimously by theologians."}

Ezekiel 18
⁵ Suppose there is a righteous man who does what is just and right.
⁶ He does not eat at the mountain shrines or look to the idols of the house of Israel. He does not defile his neighbor’s wife or lie with a woman during her period.
⁷ He does not oppress anyone, but returns what he took in pledge for a loan. He does not commit robbery but gives his food to the hungry and provides clothing for the naked.
⁸He does not lend at usury or take excessive interest. He withholds his hand from doing wrong and judges fairly between man and man.

⁹ He follows my decrees and faithfully keeps my laws. That man is righteous; he will surely live,  declares the Sovereign LORD.

¹⁰ Suppose he has a violent son, who sheds blood or does any of these other things
¹¹ (though the father has done none of them): He eats at the mountain shrines. He defiles his neighbor’s wife.
¹² He oppresses the poor and needy. He commits robbery. He does not return what he took in pledge. He looks to the idols. He does detestable things.
¹³He lends at usury and takes excessive interest. Will such a man live? He will not! Because he has done all these detestable things, he will surely be put to death and his blood will be on his own head.