CEO salaries pay no heed to recession

Even as more Americans find themselves unemployed and struggling to make ends meet, new analysis shows chief executives at some of the nation's best-known companies are hauling in the dough.

Outsized compensation at the upper echelons of U.S. companies is nothing new -- recall the outrage in 2003 caused by the $140 million pay package given to former New York Stock Exchange chief executive Richard Grasso.

But the insult to average workers is perhaps graver today amid job losses, shrunken retirement portfolios and reduced home values. And still fresh many people's mind are last year's record oil prices that depleted wallets and resulted in record profits at oil companies.