Corporate Crime: Straight to the Top
Paul Krugman on George W. Bush setting precedents in the corporate crime wave. I’m constantly stunned by how the U.S. could end up in such a situation, with such an administration (perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised):
To give the most extreme example (so far), how can we take his moralizing seriously when Thomas White — whose division of Enron generated $500 million in phony profits, and who sold $12 million in stock just before the company collapsed — is still secretary of the Army?
My emphasis above, although I’m sure you hardly need me to inject a note of forehead-smacking incredulity.
As usual, Krugman is worth quoting at length. Click below for more excerpts from his column that will have you thinking you’ve stumbled through the looking glass.
An aside: Some pundits have tried to dismiss questions about Mr. Bush’s business career as unfair — it was long ago, and hence irrelevant. Yet many of these same pundits thought it was perfectly appropriate to spend seven years and $70 million investigating a failed land deal that was even further in Bill Clinton’s past. And if they want something more recent, how about reporting on the story of Mr. Bush’s extraordinarily lucrative investment in the Texas Rangers, which became so profitable because of a highly incestuous web of public policy and private deals? As in the case of Harken, no hard work is necessary; Joe Conason laid it all out in Harper’s almost two years ago.
But the Harken story still has more to teach us, because the S.E.C. investigation into Mr. Bush’s stock sale is a perfect illustration of why his tough talk won’t scare well-connected malefactors.
Mr. Bush claims that he was “vetted” by the S.E.C. In fact, the agency’s investigation was peculiarly perfunctory. It somehow decided that Mr. Bush’s perfectly timed stock sale did not reflect inside information without interviewing him, or any other members of Harken’s board. Maybe top officials at the S.E.C. felt they already knew enough about Mr. Bush: his father, the president, had appointed a good friend as S.E.C. chairman. And the general counsel, who would normally make decisions about legal action, had previously been George W. Bush’s personal lawyer — he negotiated the purchase of the Texas Rangers. I am not making this up.
Most corporate wrongdoers won’t be quite as well connected as the young Mr. Bush; but like him, they will expect, and probably receive, kid-glove treatment. In an interesting parallel, today’s S.E.C., which claims to be investigating the highly questionable accounting at Halliburton that turned a loss into a reported profit, has yet to interview the C.E.O. at the time — Dick Cheney.
•••
Posted to General Rants • 2002.07.13 (Sat) • 09:48
Comments
Post a comment:
Send This Story to an Enemy
• • •
