This is as simple as public relations. During some past national crisis the heads of companies would declare the country comes first and then announce they were cutting their own pay to $1 a year. They would then ask the other leaders in their company to do the same. In fact, I think the head of GM just did this.

Please note that none of these people starved to death as most had millions in the bank when they did this. Also, none of them gave up any perks or benifits which, if you are the head of something like a major oil company, are pretty sweet.

The companies that did this got lots of free publicity and in many cases the buying public responded in a good way.

During World War 2 some companies even went so far as to advertise that people should not buy their products until after the war. They knew the war would end someday so they kept their brand before the public even though they had nothing to sell.

In a crisis perception is not everything, but it counts for a lot. But can you see a CEO coming out and saying today, "It is true! We do make too much!"

We need business people that will throw politics out the window and tell the American people, "The recovery starts right here, right now!", and then tell the reporters to write whatever the hell they want because they will be too busy working to read it.

I am not sure how much good this would do overall, but it would shift the focus off how much CEO's get paid.