Who are the biggest wealth creators and wealth destroyers in American business? That's the goal of an annual analysis from Chief Executive magazine and Applied Financial Group, which attempts to rank those CEOs based on how much economic value they've created.

Two Northwest high-tech leaders appeared on the list, but at different ends of the spectrum. Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos -- who has driven the online retailer's stock price up more than 33 percent so far this year -- finished fifth just behind Apple's Steve Jobs. That was down one slot from last year's ranking.

But the big drop came at Microsoft. Steve Ballmer's ranking plummeted a whopping 65 spots as the CEO of the software giant finished in 73rd place. That was enough for the company and Ballmer to earn an "F" in terms of economic margin change. [Update: As a reader pointed out, Microsoft did receive an "A" rating in three of the categories, including management quality score]. Only Campbell Soup, and its CEO Douglas Conant, saw a bigger drop among the top 100 companies.

The authors did not point to Ballmer's decline specifically, but the report does note a problem associated with big, profitable companies.

The more profitable a company is, the more difficult it is to maintain high levels of profitability when competitors step up and target market leaders. Some companies find that the "easy money"—high margins on a product or market—ultimately dries up. Also, if a business model is successful and a company is making healthy profits, it becomes a target.

That's certainly been the case for Microsoft, which has faced increased competition from Google, Apple, Salesforce.com and others.

The CEO Wealth Creation Index is now in its third year. It measures economic margin, which is described as the "degree to which a company makes money in excess of its risk-adjusted cost of capital."

This year's list was led by Jeff Boyd, CEO of online travel company Priceline.com.

Here's a look at the full list.