5 Highest Paid CEOs in America

Before I name the five biggest big-swinging CEOs in the U.S. of A. let me point out that none of these playas are bankers, and, in fact, all of them made more last year than Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, combined.

Okay, now that that's out of the way, here they are, in ascending order of phatness of 2010 paycheck:

5. David Zaslav, $42.59 million, CEO of Discovery Communications, which counts among its brands the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, OWN (Oprah Winfrey Neywork) and TLC.

4. John Hammergren, $54.58 million, CEO of McKesson, which sells a whole lot of drugs (of the pharmaceutical kind); it also hawks medical supplies and services.

3. Larry Ellison, $70.14 million, CEO of Oracle, the monstrous maker and distributor of computer software and hardware, servers and storage systems, applications and databases.

2. Ray Irani, $76.1 million, CEO of Occidental Petroleum, the oil and gas conglomerate.

1. Philippe Dauman, $84.5 million, CEO of Viacom, the entertainment company whose brands include Paramount Pictures, Comedy Central, VH-1 and MTV and who, when cashing his phat-ar$e check at his local Chase branch a few weeks back, reportedly said to the chick who handed him fifty-two stacks of Ben Franklins, "That ain't working, honey. That's the way you do it."

(CNBC: The Highest Paid CEOs of 2010)