Just when corporate greed reaches a new level of embarrassment, an example of excessive CEO compensation tops it. The most recent outrage is huge cash bonuses to be awarded to the seven executives of American Airlines, a company that was on the verge of bankruptcy when it demanded, and won, large concessions from its unions.

The company’s employees are right to be outraged about this sweet deal for corporate officers that was discovered after workers had agreed to $1.8 billion in wage and benefit cuts. Chief Executive Officer Donald Carty belatedly agreed to rescind the bonus plan, which would have paid executives twice their annual salaries just for staying on the job. But he refused todo away with a $41 million payment to the company’s executive compensation fund that would shield these poor souls from the financial vagaries caused by a bankruptcy filing.

Ironically, it may just be this CEO hubris – and not the slumping economy or cutbacks in travel – that may doom American Airlines to bankruptcy. Now that they have the facts, the airline’s three unions are preparing to vote again on the concessions. They likely won’t be so generous this time around. The question of why the unions were not told of the executive perks before they voted on concessions so far remains unanswered. The biggest unanswered question, however, is what Mr. Carty and the other American executives were thinking.

“To do this kind of thing in the midst of all the sacrifices being taken by the unions, American Airlines seems contemptuous of the feelings of the rank and file,” Clete Daniel, a professor of labor history at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., told The Kansas City Star. “You wonder what special talents these top executives have that make them worth keeping, when their apparent genius has led the airline into losing billions of dollars and facing a possible bankruptcy,” he said.

The same question could be asked of many of today’s corporate executives – and the boards that hire and fire them. Fortune magazine recently reported that median compensation for the nation’s chief executives increased 14 percent (to $13.2 million a year) at a time when the S&P 500 – a measure of corporate performance – was down more than 22 percent. Poor performance, it seems, has its rewards. Dennis Kozlowski, the former Tyco CEO who is under indictment for his questionable business practices, earned $82 million last year, making him the second highest paid executive in the country. Sun Microsystems head Scott McNealy saw his compensation rise by 31 percent last year even as the company’s stock was tanking.

There are also examples of corporate excess closer to home. Last month, UnumProvident fired its top executive and gave him $17 million on the way out the door. Since the 1999 merger of Portland-based Unum Corp. and The Provident Cos. of Chattanooga, Tenn., the company has paid nearly $45 million to shed three top executives. During this time, the value of the company’s stock has collapsed and it has been dogged by claims that it routinely denied disability insurance claims without regard to their merit. It is facing lawsuits from former policyholders who say they were denied benefits.

These days, running a corporation into the ground appears to be the best retirement savings plan going. In this era of when there is much talk of corporate reform, CEO compensation seems a good place to start to really change the system.