Inflated salaries that make the hot air balloons of billionaire hobbyists look like pimples are scarcely the only compensation CEOs get these days. One must consider their perks as well. And, my goodness, how they percolate up through the ground of their misbegotten corporations like gushers of oil.

The article at the link below considers several categories of perks:

1) Booze - Wine and tobacco giant UST Inc. awards $200,000 pay packages and $5,000 wine allowances to its "independent" (read "part-time") directors. $5,000 is enough to pay my way through two bottles of Talisker a week. The CEO himself gets a $6,500 booze package, in addition to $6 million in salary. Anheuser-Busch offers "unlimited free beer" to its top execs, who already earn between $2.5 and $10 million in salary. Change enough to finance more than the occasional foray to the local packie, don't you think? I wouldn't be surprised if these glorified moonshiners offered their top drunks free liver transplants as well, the organs extracted on demand from downsized employees.

2) Air Travel - In these days of global warming, during which Eco-puritans are shaking their fingers at Mom and Pop Vacationer for taking that once-in-a-quarter-century jaunt to Europe, some CEOs spend enough time on company jets to cover the earth with their golden contrails. The CEO of i2 Technologies racked up $942,000 in private travel costs, in addition to $5.7 million in other compensation. The CEO of United Technologies spent $612,000 of the company's money "for his personal use of the company jet", in addition to $27 million in overall pay. The finance czar of Time Warner commutes from Atlanta to New York City via the company jet at a cost of $512,000, even though he makes $9 million a year and could well afford his own pied-a-terre in The Big Apple. The CEO of American Express never gets a chance to use his bonus points to fly, as the company foots the bill at $405,000 a year, in addition to a whopping $29.1 million in "regular" pay. He's flying first class at your expense, on the back of your credit card finance charges.

3) Living Expenses - Corporations who grant "housing allowances" to massively well-paid personnel include Carnival (of Carnival Cruises), which pays $142,000 a year to shack up a chairman who's already raking in $3.1 million, and Bluefly, which forks over $4,000 a month to help put up an indigent CEO who only makes $6.1 million a year. Why should your company pay for your housing expenses when you're already rich enough to afford a castle on every continent?

Check out all these perks and more at MSN.com.

"The Worst CEO Perks" from MSN.com