It's all that easy, right? Shareholders exercising control of major corporations is notoriously difficult to achieve, particularly as many shares are held in mutual funds, or other entities which cast votes for all the investors. The managers of these funds, or the firms for which they work participate in a network of horse trading. You want in on the new IPO Goldman Sachs is underwriting so you can take advantage of the nearly guaranteed underpricing to juice your returns, you better make sure the bonuses flow.

If Kerkorian couldn't do crap about GM with the huge stake he took in the firm, peon investors aren't going to be able to do anything with the Wall Street's bank holding companies. Besides, they're too damn big and have to great of an ability to impact the economy. They should be getting broken up into pieces small enough to drown in a bathtub.