Corporate Ethics Redux
To further reinforce my comments yesterday on the lack of corporate ethics and the failure of the feds to go after the execs who gamed the system is an article in today’s LA Times. It reports that Lehman Brothers awarded $700 million to top executives just before it went bankrupt. It’s further evidence that financial company executives did everything me first where money was concerned, with little regard for investors, stockholders or regulators. Should we be surprised? http://lat.ms/Inl0LN
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Wow. They just looted and ran eh? I’m looking forward to watching Mittens schill for their right to do so in the coming months.
I’m not surprised. Are you surprised? Maybe they will really all go to China and fleece the locals there. Of course if they get caught, things are handled a little differently there…
I would love to see them go to China and pull the same stuff! That would, at least, be some sort of justice (after they got caught). Meanwhile, slamfu, others are looting and not even bothering to run.
Watch Mittens schill fo their right to do so? Why should he? Obama has institutionalized the right to do so (see JOBS act). Has the current administration gone after the (likely) thousands of miscreants who orchestrated the financial melt-down? If they have; I missed it!
Why has the FBI not been tasked with going after the MERS fiasco? How about having them do investigations into at least SOME of the financial crimes that were committed by corporate and private donors of political money? At least if they did that, the current administration and congress might have some credibility.
Having said all this, I don’t believe that Romney will do better. I believe that he will actually do worse than Obama (and that is really going some).
Wow, coming down on Obama, RC.
RC
I can see you are not, but I’m hoplessly optimistic that Obama’s second term, if he gets one, will see prosecution of both the torture and financial misbehavior.
It would be unrealistic to see it now, given the obstinancy of Congress to even pass bills that have always been passed. If Obama is reelected, something may be done, even with out Democratic majorites in either house. If Romney is elected, I’d doubt anything would be done since a reelection would be a hamper.
This is why maybe we should have one Presidential term of whatever length is deemed adequate.
Ohio, this is an entertaining book about the one-time six year term in Mexico.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/21/books/review/21rafferty.html
dd
Have you read it? If it is as good as Pamela, Clarissa, and Dangerous Liasons, it’s worth a read.
I was with GE in the late 40′s when the price fixing scandal involving GE, Westinghouse and Allis Chalmers broke. People lost their jobs, were fined and went to jail. To make sure no-one could claim they didn’t know, should the problem reoccur in the future, from that point on every GE executive who could conceivably have anything to do with pricing, had to annually read the consent decree that concluded that case and certify that they’d read it.
Somewhere in the intervening years we’ve become soft on white collar wrongdoing. The best way to coinvince a group to change their behavior is fine, fire and send to jail all those in the group who were involved in the scam. Punishing one or two won’t do it…you’ve got to punish hundreds to make the point.
Ohio, a while back, I enjoyed it, but it makes the point that a single term can also have problems, at least in Mexico.