my glee when I heard that the government is slashing the salaries of the top execs at those banks that we bailed out.

I know I'm not alone. Most of us who live on this side of the border that separates the pawns from the plutocrats were as giddy as schoolgirls at recess when we heard the news.

But it sent shockwaves through the cloistered confines where our most highly valued execs reside. They were heard yelping like scalded puppies.

Top-tier execs at Citigroup have called an emergency meeting in Princeton next week to assess the impact on their compensation packages and to map a counteroffensive against the unAmerican policies of this socialist administration. Or something like that.

So, I'm thinking, what's the big deal? The cuts will affect only 25 of the most highly paid executives at the top-five major financial companies and at the two auto companies that we now own. They didn't have any problem with government intervention when they received $250 billion in bailout money.

But then Kenneth R. Feinberg, the government's special master on compensation, yanked the strings attached to the bailout money. His mission: to link executive pay to performance.

You pieceworkers and wage slaves are familiar with this concept. Executives, not so much.

Their compensation packages include salary, bonuses, stock options, retention incentives and other stuff you won't find on your pay stub.

Most of that stuff won't be touched. They will still get their stock options and retention bonuses. They still have their golden parachutes that let them land softer than a mosquito on a cotton ball.

Most of these execs have been pulling down tens of millions a year for as long as they can remember. They must have set a little something aside. Can't they make do until the storm blows over?

Well, that's easy enough for us to say. Turns out that it's much harder for them to make do. The CPI, or Consumer Price Index, is up 3 percent since last year. But the CLEWI has gone up 4.2 percent in the past 12 months, according to Forbes magazine.

For those of you who are CLEWless, CLEWI is the Cost of Living Extremely Well Index. I'm not making this up. You can find it in Forbes magazine

CLEWI tracks expenses like the cost to enroll Muffy at Groton. At $35,000 a year, it's up 6 percent this year. Harvard, at $39,800 a year for room and board, is up 5 percent in the last year.

You can barely afford to have a few friends over to the summer cottage in the Hamptons. A kilo of top-shelf caviar is $24,400, up 149 percent. You don't even want to know what a case of Dom Perignon is going for this year.

Even the most careful shoppers would be hard-pressed to pick up a colt for under $300,000 at the Fasig-Tipton yearling sale this season.

A stripped down Learjet 40 with just standard equipment costs $8,240,000, 3 percent more than last year. Add hangar fees and pilots' pay and it's almost enough to make you fly commercial.

You can't find a yacht basin with a slip suitable for a 120-footer that draws six feet of water for under $350 a day. Monthly marina rates are up, too.

Ionized lap pools, digitally cooled wine cellars, centrally heated thoroughbred stables and custom-rolled Dominican Churchills are all up.

They're having to make choices like whether to staff the ski lodge at Aspen year round, or whether to fly your tailor in from London or just pick up a couple of Ermenegildo Zegna pinstripe suits off the rack for about $2,100 a copy.

Made my head hurt just thinking about the sacrifices some of these captains of industry are having to contemplate.

Just goes to show, we might not be so quick to judge these execs if we had to walk a mile in their Gucci loafers or Prada pumps.

Send e-mail to smithel@phillynews.com or call 215-854-2512. For recent columns: http://go.philly.com/smith