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2. Indra Nooyi

4. Ellen Kullman

5. Angela Braly

6. Andrea Jung

7. Ginni Rometty

9. Meg Whitman

Gallery: The 10 Richest Americans

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The CEO of Starbucks wants Washington to wake up and smell the coffee.

Infuriated by what he described as irresponsible behavior, Howard Schultz is calling on his fellow CEOs -- and other would-be donors -- to boycott all campaign contributions to either party until the nation's elected leaders put aside their political posturing and find some common ground on long-term fiscal issues.

Schultz wrote in a widely distributed email dated Monday that, like "so many common-sense Americans," he wants elected leaders to consider "all options, from entitlement programs to taxes," and reach a wide-ranging budget deal "long before the deadline arrives this fall."

Schultz concluded with a promise: "We today pledge to withhold any further campaign contributions to the President and all members of Congress until a fair, bipartisan deal is reached that sets our nation on stronger long-term fiscal footing. "

It's not clear who else he was speaking for -- and Schultz is something of an unlikely populist. His 2010 compensation was nearly $22 million, according to Equilar, adding to a net worth of over three-quarters of a billion dollars.

Then again, earlier Monday morning, the even richer Warren Buffett, in a New York Times op-ed, railed at Congress for being too billionaire-friendly.

Fred Wertheimer, dean of Washington's campaign-finance reform community, said his group, Democracy 21, will be working with Schultz to build national support for a donation boycott. "He asked for our help and we are happy to give it to him," Wertheimer said.

"We think it's a bold move," he added. "And we think the gridlock and deadlock and partisanship in Washington has reached such levels that it has to be broken through."

Wertheimer said the relationship between money and Washington politics is clear: "When you're in a situation when you need sacrifices to be made from all quarters, the power exercised by political money makes it extremely difficult to achieve that result."

Republican intransigence on raising any taxes whatsoever, even on the wealthiest Americans, has been a major source of Washington's gridlock.

Schultz has not been a particularly generous political donor himself. And if he ends up being the only donor who actually goes through with the boycott, the losers will be Democratic candidates. The opensecrets.org website shows Schultz gave $70,000 to the Democratic National Committee between 1996 and 2000, but in the last four years has contributed less than $10,000 total, shared among Washington State's two Democratic senators and President Barack Obama.

In his email, Schultz made what he called a "second pledge" as well, after noting that "while the long-term fiscal challenge is serious, even more painful to millions of Americans today is the immediate crisis of jobs."

He vowed: "Our companies are going to hire. We are going to accelerate growth, employment, and investment in jobs."

Schultz's boycott campaign was first reported over the weekend by New York Times columnist Joe Nocera. Nocera described how the boycott campaign was the outgrowth of an earlier email that Schultz sent last week to Starbucks employees and some fellow business leaders. In that email, Schultz described himself as "growing more and more frustrated at the lack of cooperation and irresponsibility among elected officials as they have put partisan agendas before the people's agenda."

He told Nocera the response was so positive that it galvanized him to take the next step.

Schultz was not immediately available for comment.

READ the full text of Schultz's email:

August 15, 2011

Dear Fellow Concerned Americans:

Our country is better than this.

Over the last few weeks and months, our national elected officials from both parties have failed to lead. They have chosen to put partisan and ideological purity over the well-being of the people. They have undermined the full faith and credit of the United States. They have stirred up fears about our economic prospects without doing anything to truly address those fears. They have spent a resource even more precious than the dollar: our collective confidence in each other, in the future, and in our ability to solve problems together.

As leaders in business, we have watched all this unfold, first with frustration and then with dismay. Like so many of our employees and customers, we are gravely concerned about the current situation. Today, with both humility and urgency, we propose to do something about it.

First, we aim to push our elected leaders to face the nation's long-term fiscal challenges with civility, honesty, and a willingness to sacrifice their own re-election. This means not kicking the can anymore. It means reaching a deal on debt, revenue, and spending long before the deadline arrives this fall. It means considering all options, from entitlement programs to taxes.

This is what so many common-sense Americans want. That is why we today pledge to withhold any further campaign contributions to the President and all members of Congress until a fair, bipartisan deal is reached that sets our nation on stronger long-term fiscal footing. And we invite leaders of businesses - indeed, all concerned Americans - to join us in this pledge.

We also believe in leading by positive example. And we believe that while the long-term fiscal challenge is serious, even more painful to millions of Americans today is the immediate crisis of jobs. Tens of millions are unemployed and underemployed. Right now our economy is frozen in a cycle of fear and uncertainty. Companies are afraid to hire. Consumers are afraid to spend. Banks are afraid to lend. Record levels of cash are piling up in corporate treasuries, idling. That cash is not being used to expand operations, train new workers, underwrite new ventures, or spark innovation.

The only way to break this cycle of fear is to break it. The only way to get the country's economic circulatory system flowing again is to start pumping lifeblood through it. That is why we today issue a second pledge. Our companies are going to hire. We are going to accelerate growth, employment, and investment in jobs.

We do this because we want to set in motion an upward spiral of confidence. We are not waiting for government to create an incentive program or a stimulus. We are not waiting for economic indicators to tell us it's safe to act. We are hiring more people now. We invite leaders of businesses across the country to join us in this pledge as well - and to bring their stakeholders into the effort. Confidence is contagious. The best thing we can do now is to spread it.

This is a time for citizenship, not partisanship. It is a time for action. We don't pretend that our two pledges are quick fixes. We just believe that in this moment of great uncertainty, the government needs discipline, the people need jobs - and leaders need to lead.

Our country is better than this. Let's get things moving now.

Respectfully,
Howard Schultz

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Gallery: CNNMoney Top 100 Places To Live 2011

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The volume of assets traded on Thursday exceeded $900 million. On a typical day, around $300 million to $400 million is traded in the 401(k) accounts Aon Hewitt tracks.

Volume remained high on Monday, reaching $862 million as Congress moved closer to reaching a compromise.

Last week, 95 percent of the assets moved from stocks to fixed-income investments, primarily stable value funds.

The trends show that workers, many burned in the last economic downturn and stock market meltdown, have little patience for leaving their money vulnerable again.

It was not unusual for 401(k) accounts to lose a third of their balance as the market plunged in 2008 and hit bottom in March of 2009.

"More fear and uncertainty had folks running to the sidelines rather than wanting to weather another one of those downturns," said Pam Hess, Aon Hewitt's director of retirement research.

After the market bottomed in 2009, about 6 percent of 401(k) assets in the accounts Aon Hewitt monitors moved from stocks to bond funds. Average stock exposure declined from about 70 percent to 50 percent of the assets, Hess said.

Only about 1 percent of those assets moved back into stocks, which means many investors lost out on the market's rise. The S&P 500 has nearly doubled since early 2009.

In the last few weeks about another 1 percent of assets has been moved from stocks.

Hess said the investors getting out of the market now will have a difficult time getting back in at the opportune moment to maximize their investment.

"It really is counterproductive," she said. "If you're focusing on the long term, reacting to short-term fluctuations is generally going to lead to suboptimal results."

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The allegations mirror those in public actions taken by the Federal Reserve and a separate lawsuit filed by the city of Baltimore.

Last week, the Fed said that perhaps more than 10,000 borrowers were inappropriately steered into subprime mortgage loans or had their loan documents falsified by bank personnel. Wells Fargo agreed to pay $85 million to settle the civil charges. It did not admit wrongdoing.

In its ongoing case against Baltimore, Wells Fargo stands accused of using those same practices, but deploying them against black borrowers in majority-black neighborhoods, an act commonly known as "reverse redlining." The city alleges that the bank targeted black borrowers, knowing they'd ultimately default on their loans, but did not fear shouldering the cost because Wells sold those loans to investors. Wells Fargo denies the allegations.

"We have a very strong commitment to serving all customers along the credit spectrum, and we do so without bias," said Vickee Adams, a spokeswoman for Wells Fargo. "That's the type of responsible lending that we practice." Adams declined to comment on the Justice probe.

The previously-undisclosed Justice probe, which is being led by the Civil Rights division's Fair Lending Unit, lends credence to the city's lawsuit, sources told The Huffington Post. The official overseeing the office, Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez, previously served as secretary of Maryland's Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation, a consumer protection agency that regulates mortgage and foreclosure terms and houses the state's financial regulator.

Taken together, the various investigations paint a picture of a lender that profited by knowingly targeting less-sophisticated borrowers, in particular preying upon those communities that traditionally lacked access to a full range of consumer credit products.

They also add up to significant blows to the bank's once-pristine reputation. Widely seen as the most innocent of the biggest mortgage lenders, Wells Fargo executives were spared the humiliation of having to answer critical questions in public from the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, and unlike its competitors, the bank's pre-crisis activities were never the subject of the commission's hearings.

But over the past year, that reputation has begun to crumble.

Wells Fargo has fought lawsuits from Baltimore and the city of Memphis alleging that the bank preyed upon black borrowers; settled claims it illegally steered credit-worthy borrowers into subprime loans and misled investors about the risks of mortgage-backed securities it sold; and fought investigations and regulatory actions stemming from revelations that it employed so-called "robo-signers," the agents directed by lenders to process foreclosure filings en masse without examining the underlying paperwork.

The bank, along with four other companies, is also the subject of confidential audits by the Department of Housing and Urban Development that accuse the lender of defrauding taxpayers in its handling of foreclosures on homes purchased with government-backed loans, HuffPost reported in May.

Wells Fargo is in the middle of negotiations to settle state and federal allegations that it mistreated borrowers and in some cases illegally foreclosed on them. It could cost the bank billions of dollars.

The Justice probe signals that the agency, after battling claims that it's been too easy on major mortgage firms in the wake of the financial crisis, may be toughening its approach. Its fair lending unit has about 60 open matters, Perez said in a June 1 speech. It currently has more than 15 ongoing investigations involving allegations of discriminatory lending.

A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment on the Wells Fargo investigation.

In an April 5 report to Congress, Perez's unit said that some of these investigations would lead to lawsuits or settlements this year.

"We're a majority African American community, and there are people in this city who take great offense when institutions take advantage of a community's historical lack of access to credit, and in some cases lack of sophistication, by putting them in loans they can't afford," said George Nilson, Baltimore's city solicitor. "It's offensive behavior and we shouldn't tolerate it."

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The passage of the Dodd-Frank law has sowed a perception of safety that has spawned a dangerous complacency, they add.

"The next crisis will happen sooner rather than later," said Anat Admati, a professor of finance and economics at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. "We're not safer and there's still a lot of systemic risks in large banks and in the financial sector overall."

A central aim of the law, known as the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, was to undercut the assumption that some institutions are so big that their potential failure could again force the government to rescue them, rather than allow their troubles to trigger another crisis. The very perception that the government stands ready to rescue the largest banks tends to be construed by the markets as a government insurance policy -- one that encourages the executives at such institutions to take bigger risks.

But on the first anniversary of the act's passage, the nation's largest banks boast larger holdings than ever. Their political clout is on the rise, say experts, and the government regulators who are supposed to be looking out for the next wave of reckless speculation are starved of cash. Meanwhile, stalwart banking industry allies in Congress are seeking to crimp the authority of the regulators on multiple fronts.

In short, assert some experts, the problem posed by institutions seen as Too Big To Fail is itself bigger than ever.

"The structural problems are worse," said Simon Johnson, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. "Their size, incentives -- none of that has changed."

Obama administration officials maintain that the new law has contributed to greater stability in the financial system and rolled back the problem of Too Big To Fail institutions by limiting the circumstances in which the government can mount a rescue.

"It's one of these things that I think in the end people might not believe until they actually see one fail and have the government not step in," a senior Treasury Department official said last week. "But there is no authority as a matter of law for the government to commit taxpayer money in that circumstance."

Others argue that the financial system is today safer than before for the simple reason that the people working within it have gained valuable lessons.

"So much has been learned about risk management, securitization and the rest," said Ernest Patrikis, a former general counsel at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and now a partner at the law firm White & Case. "We're safer because of the experience."

But the consequences of a potential collapse of a major American lender have grown, if for no other reason than the dollar values at stake are larger.

The assets held by the five largest American banks -- Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs -- grew 3 percent last year compared to the year prior, according to their most recent quarterly filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. They held $8.7 trillion in assets as of June 30, compared to $8.4 trillion the same time last year.

"The fact is everyone views the top six banks as too big to fail," said Admati, a member of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's Systemic Resolution Advisory Committee, referring to a group that also includes Morgan Stanley. Collectively, those institutions hold close to two-thirds of the entire U.S. banking industry's assets, Federal Reserve data show.

Johnson, also a member of the FDIC's systemic committee, argues that once boom times inevitably return, these same institutions can take the same kind of risks without fear of failure: If trouble emerges, they can count on the government bailing them out again, given the alternative -- another full-blown crisis.

The Obama administration has emphasized the need to limit the vulnerability to banks that are so big that their demise would have broad repercussions. During a discussion of the economy and financial reform last year, Obama's former top economic adviser, Lawrence H. Summers, said Too Big To Fail was "in many ways the central challenge here."

"When institutions are too big to fail, they gain a competitive advantage from the sense of government support," Summers explained. "And that gives them an unfair competitive advantage. They are then able to take risks without market discipline, and when they take those risks, then they fail. And if they're too big to fail, taxpayers are on the hook and the rest of the economy suffers, as we've seen."

The distorting power of this dynamic can be huge, say experts. If creditors believe that large banks are essentially immune to normal market forces and they cannot lose money by lending to them, then they are apt to charge the banks less for their cash. If banks can borrow money on cheaper terms by dint of the perception that they can count on Uncle Sam as their guarantor, then they are more likely to take risks that would otherwise be imprudent, magnifying the risks to the system.

Money has been flowing to the largest banks on discount terms that appear to reflect the market's assumption that the taxpayer stands ready to protect them against collapse, say experts.

In 2009, this funding advantage amounted to $250 billion for 28 of the largest banks in the world, according to Andrew Haldane, the executive director for financial stability at the Bank of England.

In June 2009, the five largest U.S. banks paid creditors on average about 3.6 percent less on their long-term debt than they would have had they not been perceived to be too big to fail, according to Thomas Hoenig, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.

When banks can acquire money cheaply, they tend to distribute it more freely -- on risky loans, but also on out-sized pay packages for their employees, say experts. This enables them to lure the best and brightest minds to high finance, depriving goods-producing industries of innovative workers.

A team of economists affiliated with the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland determined last year that the pay of banking and finance executives was more associated with the size of the financial institution than its operating efficiency.

"This kind of pay structure might have encouraged managers to grow the sizes of the financial institutions they work for at the expense of the returns on the capital invested," the team concluded in their study.

"These distortions must be addressed," Admati said.

The Treasury official emphasized that regulators are today substantially disinclined against rescuing major financial institutions, which limits the risks being taken by such lenders. Though officials acknowledge that taxpayer funds could be used as a stopgap measure as the government supervises the orderly unwinding of troubled institutions, the new law enables federal authorities to recoup those funds from surviving firms.

Experts question whether that scenario would really play out.

"Surviving institutions are likely to be stressed themselves in the event of a crisis," Thomas F. Cooley, an economics professor at the New York University Stern School of Business, said during a panel discussion on the financial reform law last month. And the fact that companies may be forced to pay up after the fact "may encourage them to take additional risk," he said.

Whatever the merits of the Dodd-Frank act, some question whether it will ever be sufficiently implemented. The 848-page piece of legislation set out roughly 400 rules governing home mortgages and consumer credit, as well as the trading of the exotic financial instruments known as derivatives. Not least, it laid out fresh restrictions on how and when government can use taxpayer funds to rescue a teetering bank.

The law was designed to make it exceedingly difficult for regulators to resort to bailouts going forward, but the market has yet to show signs that it believes that message: Major credit rating agencies continue to certify the debts of major banks as rock-solid, in part because of the assumption that they enjoy implicit government support.

But a year after its passage, only 38 of its roughly 400 new rules have been finalized, according to a July 1 review conducted by law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell. Nearly as many deadlines for new rules have been missed.

Some experts say this reflects considerable efforts by banking industry allies to hamstring the regulators as they seek to follow through. Republicans in Congress are determined to either repeal the law, trim portions of it, or -- if all else fails -- starve regulators of much-needed cash, say observers.

"Dodd Frank has tried to equip regulators with more tools, but there's so much push back from the financial industry that what emerges in the implementation of those regulations remains to be seen," said Raghuram Rajan, an economist and finance professor at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, and a former chief economist at the IMF. "There's still a question as to whether regulators will implement rules in the spirit of the legislation."

Goldman Sachs executives have held at least 83 meetings with five of the federal agencies regulating the financial system since Dodd-Frank went into effect, according to the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington-based transparency advocacy group.

JPMorgan Chase representatives have met with the agencies at least 73 times. Federal regulators have met with Morgan Stanley executives at least 58 times, while Bank of America executives have held 55 meetings.

The new rules are "already being gamed to death," Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City President Hoenig said last month.

The lobbying campaign appears to be producing gains. Earlier this year, federal bank regulators allowed some of the largest banks to resume paying dividends to their investors, even though new rules governing bank capital had yet to be finalized.

This was "the most outrageous thing regulators did," Admati said in an email. "There is NO justification for it that I heard from anyone who knows anything about this."

The banks say they have plenty of capital, and that they will meet regulators' targets through retaining a portion of their future profits.

Admati say such assurances are not enough, and she pointedly dismisses the notion that the awful experience of the last financial crisis provides comfort against a repeat. Banks continue to rely on borrowed money, she noted, with debt financing about 90 percent of their assets, according to the FDIC.

Five years ago, equity funded about 10.4 percent of the banking system's assets, FDIC data show -- a figure that experts now generally see as woefully inadequate. In the wake of the worst crisis since the Great Depression, that's risen to just 11.3 percent, according to data as of March 31.

"We're missing the big picture when it comes to systemic risk," Admati said.

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Even after rebalancing by the Nasdaq, Apple will still account for 12% of assets (down from 20%) of the PowerShares QQQ ETF (QQQ). Apple is also the largest holding of the iShares Dow Jones U.S. Technology Sector Fund ETF (IYW), accounting for about 14 percent of the fund's assets, according to the latest data. And at the Internet Architecture HOLDRs (IAH), Apple makes up 23 percent of the portfolio. Not that you would actually own the Internet Architecture HOLDRs.

Since Apple has so much sway in those ETFs, we thought we'd take a look at some relative valuations measures -- all of which suggest the stock is a bargain.

For the rest of this article, click here.

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