The $1 salary!

No, there is no billion or million after the 1; and no, this is no prank. In this age of skyrocketing salaries and ever-bulging paypackets, some American CEOs are actually taking home a solitary dollar for their year's toils. Chris Gaither of the LA Times opines that the one-dollar salary is America's latest status symbol.

As companies file their annual reports - disclosing how much they pay their head honchos and inevitably ignite outrage about exorbitant executive salaries - consider Google.

Every two weeks, the three billionaires who run the Internet search giant get a paycheck for about 4 cents. Before taxes.

That's true. Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt take home a whopping one dollar. And they are not alone. Steve Jobs (Apple), Rich Kinder (Kinder Morgan), Jeff Katzenberg and Roger Enrico (DreamWorks) and Jerrold Perenchio (Univision) are also part of this elite club.

The company cuts Kinder a single check for 93 cents, after taxes, at the beginning of each year. Kinder owns stock worth more than $2 billion, and his 24 million shares will generate $84 million in dividends this year.

But he cashes the check.

"Rich works hard for that dollar," Kinder Morgan spokesman Rick Rainey said. "We expect him to spend it."

So the next time you think of searching for a new job because the pay isn't alright, think of the Google guys - they must be knowing a thing or two about searching.