Just stumbled on this wild story about Mel Karmazin and his insane paycheck at Sirius XM back in 2012. Dude was pulling in $255.4 million that year as CEO - like, how is that even real? Meanwhile the job market was struggling with barely 148k new positions added. Wild contrast right?

So while most stocks were riding high on Fed stimulus hopes, not everything was celebrating. Netflix took a 9% hit, Coach dropped 7.5%, and Diebold got hit with bribery charges in Russia. The whole earnings season was heating up with AT&T, Boeing, and others reporting.

Analysts were all over the place with their calls. FBR Capital was bullish on Sirius XM with a $5.50 target - probably riding on that shock jock Howard Stern hype. Mel Karmazin's net worth situation honestly makes you wonder what the actual value proposition was there. Meanwhile they were also picking Pandora and rating travel stocks like Expedia and Priceline pretty favorably.

The Mel Karmazin net worth story is just one of those things that sticks with you when you see how much executives were making during that era. Mel Karmazin's compensation was absolutely eye-watering compared to what regular workers were earning. Makes you think about how different the wealth distribution looked back then versus now.