This is why boards of directors-especially compensation committees-are under attack.

When Steve Odland resigned as Office Depot's chairman and CEO last fall, the company's stock surged 9 percent on the same day.

Chris Liddell announced that he will leave General Motors on April 1.

In a press release Thursday morning, the company stressed  Liddell is stepping down after completing the largest public stock offering in history and stabilizing the company's financial operations.

The startup rate is high, but most of those enterprises are sole proprietorships.

That's according to research from the Kauffman Foundation. (For more on the topic of no-employee businesses, see today's post by my colleague Steve Taub.)  It found that more Americans have launched their own business than any time in the past 15 years. But many of them are flying solo. Specifically the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity found that .34 percent of American adults started a business each month in 2010-565,000 firms. At the same time, the quarterly employer firm rate dropped from .13 percent in 2007 to .10 percent in 2010.

Let's face it. Seemingly every day another piece of data is reported that suggest the economy is on the road to recovery...except for jobs.

Sure the unemployment rate is down to 8.9 percent, the lowest level since April of 2009 as 192,000 jobs were added last month. Also, the December and January new jobs numbers were revised upward by a total of 58,000 jobs.

The surging stock market rally not only is repairing personal balance sheets and 401(k) accounts. It is also defusing the corporate pension crisis.

The funded status of the typical US corporate pension plan in February rose 0.4 percentage points to 88 percent, according to monthly statistics published by BNY Mellon Asset Management.    

Here is yet another reminder that job growth will continue to be slow for a period of time.

A new survey by Robert Half found that an equal percentage of chief financial officers expect to boost hiring full-time accounting and finance professionals as those who plan to reduce their job ranks.

A civil war has broken out in the US and the main weapon being deployed is envy.

The war is over Other People's Money. It has been raging for more than two years now and is threatening to escalate.

A Towers Watson survey found that companies are budgeting merit pay hikes of 3 percent for 2011. This compares with the average 2.7 percent merit increase awarded to employees in 2010 and is the largest merit increase since before the financial crisis when increases typically averaged 3.5 percent to 4 percent, according to the benefits consultancy.

Companies are also planning to provide some reinforcements for their overworked employees.

Chief financial officers at manufacturing companies seem a little schizophrenic these days.

On the one hand, despite daily signs of an improving economy less than a majority (45 percent) are actually forecasting expansion for their industry in 2011. What's more, this is down sharply from the 59 percent reported last year, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch's recently released 2011 CFO Outlook.

Chief Financial Officers are more optimistic than they were three months ago.

According to the latest survey of CFOs conducted by Financial Executives International (FEI) and Baruch College's Zicklin School of Business, an index measuring CFO optimism for the US economy rose more than 10 points and the outlook for CFOs' own companies' also increased nearly four points.