If you agree greed has been a constant companion, how can it explain the rise? The bull market story also sounds suspect: if people become less stroppy about other people's pay, why has this occurred at the top of the payscale, rather than at the bottom of the payscale? Simply mentioning the trend in the market and claiming a one-sided shift in attitude doesnt strike me as an explanation at all. The same really goes for the statement "It came to be more and more accepted that greed, properly harnessed, could bring about beneficial change. Allied to this shift was a growing consensus that good would also come from linking executive pay to performance." In what way would the outcome of a market negotiation depend on a general concensus in society that greed can be harnassed for good or that performance should be linked with pay? Surely the laws of demand and supply held just as well in times when it was not a concensus opinion that good could come from greed? And are you suggesting that before there was a concensus that performance would be linked to pay, that individuals were happy to be grossly underpaid? That would only work if there was a strong social norm within companies for which shareholders were willing to forego profit too. All that needs an explanation of its own. I would also say the search and compensation consultancies they own has caused the "problem". Annually boards buy up the research of the