At the grocery store a half hour ago, the line was long enough for me to pull out the Wall Street Journal. On page 24 appeared a familiar face. It was Richard Grasso. Four years ago (now former) New York Stock Exchange chairman Dick Grasso received the highest pay package ever given to the head of a non-profit organization: 187.5 million dollars, consisting of a $139.5 million lump sum and a $48 million guarantee over the next four years.

At the time when the Grasso case kept making the headlines, I was working in finance and had a very amicable and just boss, who sort of agreed with me - nobody, we genuinely felt, especially not the head of a non-profit organization, was worth $187.5 million. It wasn't just that we felt that Grasso's pay package seemed unreasonable. New York's not-for-profit corporation law explicitly states that officers only be paid a compensation that is "reasonable." Does $187.5 million sound reasonable? Not to me, and New York then-attorney general Eliot Spitzer didn't think so either; he sued Grasso. At that time, even though I'm not big on ultimatums, I half vowed to myself that if the courts ruled in Grasso's favor, I would never ever work in business again. It was almost too easy a vow to make, because I never thought the state would lose the case.

But in the world of high finance, apparently things are not that simple. Today, the WSJ and the NYT report that Mr Grasso has just won a key round in a ruling over his pay: the appellate court ruled that the AG "does not have to authority" to bring major parts of its case against Mr Grasso. Consequently, Dick Grasso may be able to keep the money after all. One hundred, eighty-seven and a half million dollars. Grasso has also sued the NYSE for another extra $50 million in compensation and for damages due to defamation after his departure from the NYSE in 2003. Might this have something to do with his legal fees, which some say have exceeded 100 million dollars?

"This lawsuit from my point is about honor", Mr Grasso said in January.

Now, I don't know how Dick Grasso defines honor, but some of us are not yet jaded enough not to find the Grasso case outrageous.

Not-for-profit corporate law states that officer pay should be "commensurate with services performed." Lumping all of Mr Grasso's compensation together and considering it his 2003 salary, consider that the average annual pay of, say, a family doctor in the US is $152,249. Nurses earn about $55,000 a year. Thus, Mr Grasso's pay implies that he is valued at the equivalent of 1,231 doctors or 3,409 nurses. Mr Grasso didn't diagnose cancer. Mr Grasso didn't perform dialysis or assist in heart surgery. Extending this further, Mr Grasso didn't found a company. He didn't even run a company. He didn't inherit a family business. He didn't invent a thing, anything. He was the head of a non-profit securities trading platform, bound by a law meant to limit pay to what is reasonable and commensurate with services performed.

The world is warming. 3,381 American military personnel have been killed in Iraq. 46.6 million Americans don't have health insurance. About 60 percent of 16-25 year-old Americans are functionally illiterate. And some guy can get paid a couple hundred million dollars for sitting in the office and taking clients to Le Bernardin.

I'm not sure what I'm advocating here, but people should really just do something, anything - perhaps start by switching off their television sets and participating in public discourse, because this isn't right. It's wrong on so many levels.