SAN FRANCISCO (CNN/Money) - Three things are certain to me as I go about writing this column. The market will go up. The market will go down. And you'll write me letters when you either love or hate something I've written.

It seems those of you still paying attention to the stock market are in an ornery mood these days. Perhaps some group therapy will help.

Almost everyone who wrote in shared my outrage at the greedy executives at American airlines parent AMR. Usually it takes a few news cycles to depose a CEO, but Donald Carty went quickly.

John G. wrote in with an unexpected take on the scandal at AMR. "Every day I thank my lucky stars I work for a privately held company where the leadership is competent, moral, and genuinely cares about the employee," he writes. "Not coincidently, we are doing extremely well, which is a rarity in our business (IT consulting) these days. If management ever asked me to make concessions I'd gladly do it, because I know everyone would, including the person asking."

Hmm, wish I could buy stock in that company. But I can't, and that's the point.

Many of you have had it with stock options. (Though I didn't get any letters from anyone volunteering to give theirs up.) Roger J. actually has a great idea that would split the difference between my notion of eliminating them and the current situation.

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"May I suggest that the problem with options is that they reward managers for taking risks with shareholder money, not for managing the risk," says Roger. "If the risk backfires, the shareholder loses capital; the manager loses nothing. Stop the practice of giving options. Instead give bonuses in terms of deferred stock rights. Let the managers be exposed to downside as well as upside. Let the reward give them a longer term interest in their firm than yesterday, which is the reward of cash."

As good an idea as any I've heard.

The Wall Street Journal ran a fascinating page-one account Thursday of the Bush administration's plans to revamp the Iraqi economy.

Here's the salient bit: "Hoping to establish a free-market economy in Iraq following the fall of Saddam Hussein, the U.S. is calling for the privatization of state-owned industries such as parts of the oil sector, forming a stock market complete with electronic trading and fundamental tax reform." (emphasis added.)

Does it strike anyone else as odd that the U.S government plans to answer Iraq's questions on the correct structure of taxation when we can't even agree on what it should look like here, a topic of comment in this space of recently?

Adam Lashinsky is a senior writer for Fortune magazine. Send e-mail to Adam at lashinskysbottomline@yahoo.com.

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