Should we care about executive compensation or how much hedge fund managers earn? How should incentive compensation be changed? Should it be changed? Who can change it? Southwest Airline's CFO hedged fuel prices and saved the company hundreds of millions of dollars. Why was he alone in the industry in doing so? John Paulsen (admittedly controversial) made his partners $20 billion over the past two years mostly by correctly forecasting the housing market and the problems in the banking industry. They paid him over $4 billion for his work.