I wish shareholders had more power, and I do vote when I think it might have a ghost of a chance of making a difference. Unfortunately, many times various funds and other financial entities control a large percentage of stock, and there's not much individual shareholders can do, especially when there's too close a relationship between the funds and the companies they invest in.

As far as Paulson, he was head of Goldman Sachs when they were primary movers in creating and pushing the toxic financial instruments that are in large part responsible for this mess, and he left GS with many millions, probably better than $100M if my memory serves. GS could implode, and it wouldn't crimp his lifestyle one bit. But GS probably won't fail- Paulson seems to be watching out for them. He let Lehman fail- they're a GS competitor. Then he bailed out AIG, which saved GS ~$20 BILLION in defaults. Now he has given GS $10 BILLION in bailout money. And he appointed a fellow GS alumnus to be in charge of the bailout giveaway. We seem to have become numb to just how astronomical these amounts of money are, and how much is going into the pockets of the people who created this mess. Meanwhile, we individual investors have to hope that the companies that we invested in can recover from the damage.