Seems like there ought to be a consequence for lying.
The free market should pretty much take care of the situation in businesses. I think the financial mess could not have happened except that Fanny May and Freddie Mac basically gave government credibility to fraudulent numbers. IOW, if the government had kept their filthy hands out of it investors would have done their own checking on how secure everything was and wouldn’t have relied on the lies of the government - and the free market would have kept itself accountable.
Am I understanding the situation correctly?
One would think. I've known a major corporation to ask me to place a large order (we were a dealer for them), and tell me that we could send it back after theo fiscal quarter was ended. They just wanted numbers on their books to report to Wall Street. This was just one individual's action, due to the pressure he was under to report "numbers". I refused, but this person is now comfortably retired from that corporation. No telling how many others in my position accepted his request. I no longer work in that industry, in no small part because I was pretty much drummed out of it.
Same kind of thing goes on all day, everyday. Business does have a better chance than government of self correcting, and the house of cards eventually falls regardless. But the culprits are almost never punished, and they know it.
But my main point to begin with was that management nowadays has people so busy reporting metrics on their every move, they have no time to actually do their jobs. They are too busy covering their @sses.