“I love money,” leers Larry the Liquidator, the avaricious corporate raider played by Danny DeVito, in the 1991 cult classic “Other People’s Money.” The movie came to mind this week after reading about the report released by the New York Stock Exchange concerning former Chairman Richard Grasso’s compensation.

The numbers in the report read like a Valentine Mr. Grasso sent to himself. Mr. Grasso received almost $200 million during his eight-year tenure at the helm of the New York Stock Exchange. It turns out he sent some love letters to those around him as well. Talk about other people’s money! Buried in the Big Board’s big tut-tut was the news that Mr. Grasso paid his executive assistant $240,000. Per year. His two drivers earned over $130,000 per year.

It’s not that assistants for the wealthy should not be paid well. No one could quarrel with how much Mr. Grasso paid his landscaper, his contractor, purveyor of fine cigars, or his barber. That is, as long as those checks were not cut on his own expense account.

But the use of other people’s money to buy the love – or devotion – of those around you is a toxic agent in business relationships. Walter B. Wriston, the former chairman of Citicorp who died late last month, would no doubt have had a lot to say about the outrageous figures in this report on Mr. Grasso’s largesse to himself and others. Wriston’s writings, however, are just a double-click way. In a piece for a corporate governance newsletter published less than one year ago headlined, coincidentally, “Other People’s Money,” Mr. Wriston, noted that, “Most reasonable people would argue that executive compensation in America is seriously off-track.” Ah, yeah.

But it’s not just about the money. Greed is not good for business. In his book “The Twilight of Sovereignty,” Wriston wrote that the biggest danger of abusing capital is that “Capital will always go where it is welcome and stay where it is well-treated.”

Mr. Grasso may have thought he was treating his employees well. But he was abusing capital. What an irony! Mr. Grasso’s greatest pride, he has said, was getting the lights back on at the New York Stock Exchange so soon after the terrorist attack on September 11. But he was very happy to try to keep the board of directors of the exchange in the dark about some of his financial maneuvers.

Not that they were innocent. After all, it wasn’t their money, either.

In an Op-Ed piece in The New York Times last week, Robert Shiller, an economics professor at Yale University and author of “Irrational Exuberance,” blames the board’s failure to question Mr. Grasso’s fat packet on, in part, the curriculum of business schools in this country. By looking at individuals as “maximizers” of their own self-interest, business students are led to believe, writes Shiller, “that everyone would steal the silverware if he knew he could get away with it.”

Let’s get back to Larry the Liquidator, the anti-hero of a movie made more than a decade ago. The movie was a fairly complex – if funny – look at dying industries and the role of takeovers in revitalizing the economy. Yes, it’s true, Larry was greedy and he lacked, shall we say, emotional depth. He viewed life as a game in which, he says, “Whoever died with the most toys, wins.”

But the main drama in the movie centered on the ethics of takeovers and the responsibility of company executives to keep their employees employed. Today, the punch line of one of today’s most popular television shows – you know which one – is “You’re fired.” And we laugh.

What kind of movies are they going to make about Tyco, WorldCom, and HealthSouth? The ethical issues here are pretty basic. It’s not even, really, about the love of money. It’s about a sense of entitlement that allows corporate employees to use other people’s money as if it were their own. Kind of like stealing silverware from a restaurant or the towels from a hotel. Only really expensive silverware and very fancy towels – and lots of them.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Ms. Bailey is a business writer and family therapist practicing in New York.