WSJ: Arthur Andersen's 'Victory' - A retrial won't help the firm's 28,000 former employees.

opinionjournal.com ^ | June 1, 2005 | Editorial

[OESY]

As a unanimous Supreme Court... announced its reversal of the 2002 criminal conviction of Arthur Andersen for shredding Enron-related documents, our first thought was: ..."Which office do I go to to get my reputation back?"

Except that in this case, even if the proverbial office existed, there is no one left at Andersen to knock on the front door and demand restitution. The accounting giant, which once employed 28,000 people in the U.S. and 85,000 world-wide, is essentially no more. There's still an office in Chicago, but the fewer than 200 people who work there handle leftover legal and administrative chores and manage a bit of real estate.

The verdict, if not the indictment itself, was a death sentence for the partnership, 98% of whose employees had never cast an eye on an Enron audit. It was handed down by a Houston jury after 10 days of deliberation, and nearly a hung jury, following instructions from the judge that the Supreme Court now says were faulty. Anyone interested in a succinct history of Andersen's role in the Enron collapse, by the way, should make a point of reading Chief Justice William Rehnquist's 12-page ruling for the Court.

As we argued at the time, it would have been wiser for the Justice Department to go after individual Andersen partners for obstructing justice while handing over the firm to Paul Volcker....

Numerous senior Andersen alumni... took their clients and vamoosed to one of the remaining Big Four accounting firms, which averted their eyes from any Enron taint. Today their services are in even greater demand thanks to Sarbanes-Oxley and the rash of post-Enron government regulations. It's one of life's political ironies that the fallout from the corporate scandals has enriched the very accounting profession that Congress claimed it was attempting to punish....

[I still care]

Something so conviently ignored by the powers that be and the MSM. Corporations are PEOPLE.

So often when I see movies the leftist mantra comes out that the evil ones are corporations. But when a company is damaged, who hurts? The investors and the workers. The common folk.

[monday]

"The verdict, if not the indictment itself, was a death sentence for the partnership, 98% of whose employees had never cast an eye on an Enron audit."

So the govt. f's up again. What a surprise...not!

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Paul Volcker. One of the usual suspects...