<i>"Experienced COBOL programmers can earn more than $100 an hour when they get called in to patch up glitches, rewrite coding manuals or make new systems work with old."</i><p>If they're only getting $100/hour as a consulting rate, they aren't really in such high demand - that's roughly what an experienced software developer can make as an employee (assuming they work 40 hour weeks).
In a time long ago, a place far away, I did some COBOL. Wasn't even on IBM. Fortran too. But it might take more than a time machine to make me COBOL Cowboy.