Let me give you an example. I come up to you and reach into my right pants pocket. I pull outa 20 dollar bill and say "See I have 20 bucks in my pocket". Then I palm the 20 while pretending to put it back into my right pants pocket. I then reach into my left pants pocket. I pull my hand out displaying the 20 dollar bill again. I say, "See I have 20 bucks in this pocket too." I repeat the act for both hip pockets, two shirt pockets and 4 jacket pockets. You think I have 200 bucks.
I become homeless when I am unable to pay the $200 room rent. Not because I made you believe I had 200 bucks I did not have.
There is not need or reason to lie about money if you have the money.
Only the investers that bought in at the very last lost money because of the scam. Had they company been truthful as the email sender requested, the plunge in stock value to zilch would have occured much sooner.
Many of the telcoms were trying to stave off disaster until "things picked up". They lied and cheated in the hopes that an upturning economy would sav them. It did not happen.
The bad actor is Enron. Enron did in fact cook its books not to save the company, but for the same reason Ponzi did a 100 years ago. It was a con act from day one.
The problem is with the attempts Democrats try to use to control crooked behavior. Democrats always want to pass laws preventing specific acts. In 1993 they came to the conclusion that CEOs were making too much money. They solved that by making any salary to an executive above $1,000,000 dollars a year not deductable to the compnay as a business expense. Thus when NBC pays Katie Couric 25 million dollars a year, they can count her entire salary as business overhead. But when GE pays its president 2 million dollars a year, all above the one million is not a buisness overhead. They in effect doubled the tax on a CEOs salary over one million. Lawyers get paid the big bucks to find away around such laws and they do. What is requires are laws can't be gotten around.
Human nature is still in effect. Lawyers exist. They found ways around the law and the way around is almost always worse than the original behavior. The CEOs took their income off the company books all together. They discovered they could hide their income as stock options. Since stock options are not expensed on the books, the bosses can get any income they want and the stock holders never know. When they took it as salary it was out there for all to see. But when they went for stock options, CEOs could pay themselves huge amounts. Cisco announced yesterday that its stock options this year amount to 80 percent of its profits. Think about that they are running the company for 80 percent of the NET.
The solution is very simple. Make it so any person or group of stockholders with some shares can go in and look at the books anytime they want too. It is impossible to hide hanky panky if the stockholders get to look at all the records and interrogate the employees that keep them. But that is not the case. The company files reports to the SEC on a quarterly basis. The stock holders only get to see those fancy reports. There are many ways to lie on the SEC reports and companies that are in trouble do. Companies that are doing well have no reason to lie.
Think of an SEC report as correspondence from a pen pal boy friend. A tall dark and handsome caring rich guy has no reason to lie to you about his looks and wealth and doesn't. It is the short, fat, ugly, poor, mean guy that will lie to you. The solution is not to make pen pal lying illegal, it is to require in person meetings.
We need to make them open up the books and accounting employees to the stockholders. The lower level people runing the accounting software in the company will have a very good idea of who has their hands in the til and who does not. They could tell you in quick order whose hanky is panky and whose is not.
HONESTY IS ONLY GUARANTEED WHEN THERE IS NO WAY TO GET AWAY WITH DISHONESTY. COMPLETE DISCLOSURE IS THE ONLY SOLUTION.
Way ahead of you. You learn in the dating game that anyone who flashes money, no matter what they look like, is suspect.
Only the investors............?
GX, WorldCom, Enron, etc are learning fast that it is only the investors who count.
HONESTY IS ONLY GUARANTEED WHEN THERE IS NO WAY TO GET AWAY WITH DISHONESTY. COMPLETE DISCLOSURE IS THE ONLY SOLUTION.
Excellent argument, CT. A close duplicate (with the last paragraph completely unmodified) could also apply to campaign finance reform.