Posted on 07/11/2002 1:15:22 PM PDT by PhiKapMom
Bush Speech Targets Corporate Lapses>{? 2002-07-11
THE recent wave of corporate scandals involving Enron, WorldCom, Global Crossing and others is rooted partly in the dishonesty, situational ethics and technical evasiveness sown in the 1990s by Bill Clinton and his administration, and a vast expansion of government regulation will be hard- pressed to remedy it. In that context President Bush gets some good marks for his speech to Wall Street on Tuesday, in which he called for harsher penalties for convicted wrongdoers and announced creation of a "financial crimes SWAT team" that will target white-collar crimes. Given the hysteria being generated on Capitol Hill, we're relieved at Bush's relative restraint.
"I'm calling for a new ethic of personal responsibility in the business community, an ethic that will increase investor confidence, will make employees proud of their companies and again regain the trust of the American people," Bush said.
We think the emphasis is well-placed for the most part and reject the notion now stampeding the Senate that a raft of new regulations -- and the attendant bureaucracies to enforce them -- are needed.
Indeed, Democratic critics sensing a political opening against a popular president complained Bush's approach doesn't go far enough. (A Wall Street Journal editorial wryly noted that even if Bush proposed public hangings it wouldn't have been enough for the other side.)
The Washington Post's liberal editorial page sniffed: "It is naive to suppose that business can be regulated by some kind of national honor code." Yet this presupposes that some new body of laws can or should be crafted to check those to whom honor and ethics mean little -- precisely the culture nurtured by eight years of Clinton.
The practices that led to problems at Enron and WorldCom didn't originate on Bush's 18- month watch. Rather, they flowered under a president whose most famous line, "It depends on what the meaning of 'is' is," helped set the ethical benchmark for those bent on runaway greed.
Up front, let's note that the vast majority of American businesses are honest and well-run. It also should be acknowledged that spectacular wrongdoing at a handful of corporations has been uncovered and in the proper course of time will be punished. But existing laws should largely be sufficient to the task at hand.
It's distressing that many small investors and pensioners have been badly hurt. But risk is inherent in the market, and there is a real danger in the current climate to rashly damage, through knee-jerk legislation, an economic system that's responsible for the greatest dose of prosperity in U.S. economic history.
As Bush said, criminal acts should be punished, and sensible steps should be taken to enforce existing laws. But at its root, the real challenge is in restoring a moral code to corporate sectors where it is deficient or absent altogether.
The Washington Post's dismissive tone notwithstanding, these things must be said publicly by national leaders before they will take hold in a culture that remains crowded with the ethical weeds of the past.
There is more than symbolic value in declaring that America will not countenance immoral business practices, greed and situational ethics. It is the start to creating a new attitude that will have greater effect than a new round of Washington regulation.
That man that draws those editorial cartoons came to my school for career day once. He is a very smart and funny man!
However, just one point of many - the shredding of documents is a felony.
Has anyone, just one - please, just name one, been arrested for the shredding of documents?
Yes, due process and all that - but, for heaven's sake - not a single arrest. Not one!!!
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