WSJ: The Supremes Touch The Brakes on CEO Bashing - Begin to curb attorneys general run a muck

Wall Street Journal ^ | June 7, 2005 | GEORGE MELLOAN

[OESY]

The Supreme Court has now ruled that it was excessive prosecutorial zeal and inadequate jury instruction that destroyed Arthur Andersen in 2002, not the merits of the federal obstruction-of-justice case....

Thus, the excesses of a few corporate swingers led to suspicions that hanky-panky was the ruling ethos in every corporate boardroom. Naderites, Hollywood pundits, Marxist professors and left-wing journals piled on with assurances that they had been right about capitalists all along.

[A] Congress never reluctant to make work for fellow lawyers whooped through the Sarbanes-Oxley bill....

The sour public mood has had other effects. Staffers at the Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulatory agencies have been able to break free of adult supervision by appointive commissioners and have set about to regulate everything that moves. U.S. attorneys have endeavored to make their reputations pursuing big names in the business world....

The now-renowned Eliot Spitzer of New York and other state attorneys general began calling press conferences to denounce "crimes" never before known to man....

All of this conflict between corporate management and lawyers has dismayed a great many upstanding executives who hold responsible positions in business and earn their admittedly generous compensation packages by trying to effectively balance the interests of shareholders, employees and customers. They know that private capitalism, for all its flaws, has delivered broad opportunities for upward economic mobility to millions of Americans. Marxist whines about class distinctions and calls for politically enforced social and economic equality are echoes of a dismal Cold War past....

Business leaders aren't shrinking violets when it comes to swinging their weight around in the marketplace, but they are reluctant to engage their political critics in public debate.... In private, honest executives are often the harshest critics of boardroom misbehavior because they know it reflects on them as well....

[monday]

Everyone at Author Anderson should sue the hell out of the prosecutors and judge in the case.

[snowsislander]

The now-renowned Eliot Spitzer of New York and other state attorneys general began calling press conferences to denounce "crimes" never before known to man.

I have had concerns about some of the "crimes" that were being announced. For every clear-cut case, such as the insurance bid-rigging, there would be another one that I doubted, particularly when they were deals that were at least in part written up by the legal departments of major corporations in their areas of specialty. It strikes me as unlikely that they would be playing fast and loose with the laws.

[yoe]

But of course the American political system, not to mention the legal system, is adversarial in its nature. When General Motors became too high and mighty, it hatched a would-be giant killer named Ralph Nader, who found ways to spread his anticorporation message to several generations of college students.

Nader, the bitter and angry Marxist, has for years killed the goose that laid the golden egg, putting many out of work. It is the politicians who need the lawyer and the accountant on either side not the risk takers who make companies work and provide jobs for thousands. Nader has always been an unhappy person, raking in a handsome living by slamming corporations, not for the greater good but for his personal good.

[Alberta's Child]

The prosecution of Arthur Anderson for the "crimes" in question may have been way out of line, but it's hard for me to have any sympathy for the company. The basic problem with so many of these big accounting firms was that they were involved in clear conflicts of interest with many of their major clients. An accounting firm that certifies a company's financial statements should not be getting paid at the same time for consulting services in the company's various lines of business.

[isthisnickcool]

Maybe this will help to stop this kind of garbage where attorney generals for various states banded together to form their own illegal branch of government. This really started with the "BIG TOBACCO" shakedown dreamed up by Hillary Clinton and people like Houston attorney John O'Quinn. Compared to the pennies Hillary made on cattle futures an "flipping properties" ala Whitewater the "BIG TOBACCO" ripoff she helped organize was eveil genius.
We have a real mess in this country when it comes to professional leeching politicians like Hillary, McCain, Kerry and the rest of the lot. Some have become so powerful that they have one name. And how can that be? Hillary Clinton was elected by the people of New York. That's the people she works for. And nobody else. But Hillary Clinton rakes in HUGE amounts of money with her HillPac then uses that money to manipulate the elections of others. Like George Soros she is inserting herself in elections against taxpayers that are registered to vote against other taxpayers that are registered to vote. In elections SHE canont vote in herself! This should be illegal! Especially when it's someone like Hillary who is in the US Senate. What business does she have being involved in any elections but her own?

We need to simply change all campaign finance law such that ONLY people that can actually vote for a candidate or incumbent can donate money to them. So, if you can't vote for the candidate you can't donate to them. This simple change would turn things back to where they should be. It makes all politics LOCAL again.

[hopespringseternal]

While Attorney Generals are pretty high on the list of "people who tend to be jerks", most CEOs are even higher. You can't go around firing people for no reason and turning their lives upside down without creating a sizable political constituency that hates your guts.

Most people seem to understand being downsized when the economy or the company takes a turn for the worse, but that doesn't drive a lot of layoffs. Most layoffs seem to come from hare-brained CEO strategies designed to convince people they are "crazy like a fox" and set themselves up for another job or big bonus.

Attorneys General know that more people have a visceral hatred of CEOs than lawyers or even politicians, and they play to that hatred.

[monday]

"An accounting firm that certifies a company's financial statements should not be getting paid at the same time for consulting services in the company's various lines of business."

Most of the people who lost their jobs didn't have anything to do with Inron. The idiot prosecutors should have limited their prosecution to people who actually had something to do with Inron instead of bankrupting the entire company. The prosecutors should turn over all their future earnings to those who lost their jobs.

[monday]

"Attorneys General know that more people have a visceral hatred of CEOs than lawyers or even politicians, and they play to that hatred."

I think you are incorrect in your assessment. Most people don't even work for large corporations. I know I hate politicians and lawyers 1000's of times more than CEO's.

[narby]

I know someone who works for a large corporation involved with this Sarbanes-Oxley mess. It has enlarged the IT department by 3 to 4 times with useless overhead. And it has created "security" that actually will allow all sorts of corruption in the many isolated kingdoms that will not have the visibility of workers looking over each others shoulders. It has divided up the accounting into many little dark boxes where all kinds of nasties can hide.

[hopespringseternal]

I know I hate politicians and lawyers 1000's of times more than CEO's.

That is because you pay attention to those things. Most people are not politically engaged. But even if they don't work for a large corporation and haven't been laid off, they know someone who has.