I don't think it is. I think it's a realistic assessment of the fact that most people put their pants on one leg at a time. Some of these rants treat "corporate executives" as though they are a class of hereditary nobility who spend their entire lives in big corner offices, plotting how to screw everybody. They are totally unlike us Ordinary FolkTM... a sort of alien presence governing our lives in some mysterious way.
Can't anybody here play this game? These are the same clowns you went to high school with, except that some of them got lucky or worked their buns off or married the owner's daughter. They don't know what they're doing any more than anyone else does. Twenty years ago they were a bag-carrying salesman. Ten years ago they were sent to run the Middle East-Africa Division, where 15 of the 19 countries they operate in had active armed combat going on in them, or were being ravaged by disease. Bigger problems, but the same answer: Now what? After five years of that and a stint running Manufacturing & Engineering, they get to sit in the big corner office and make mistakes that cost billions instead of millions.
Evil? There are some. But mostly they're just guys who go to work every day and try leave things a little better than they found them.
What did happen since? Tell us about that. See if you can do it without turning six examples into a smear on a hundred million people in two million organizations.
Private companies -- a differenet story. Small business -- a different story. But when a company signs up to sell paper -- well -- paper is what they sell. And not even that anymore.
Like others I hoped and advocated for a removal of tax on dividends. Why? In may case because I know that dividends are a marking to market in some way. Those checks have to come from some real pot of money and not just imaginary puffery or a scondrels chicanery. Oh sure, even with the dividend CFO's will borrow from Peter at 2% to pay a dividend of 1%, still hiding that there's no real income to meet than payment.. I've heard, reliably, of people killed for an inside stock tip (oh more to it than that, but that's a succint synopsis -- looting dottering widows as well). I've say alongside a flying team of accountants in one of our major industrial colosi -- a division that was tossing money out the door in mismanagemnt, what were they there for? Not for business, for taxes! Making sure every aspect of accounting was aligned with maximal tax avoidance. That money could be wasted, as long as it kept taxes down.
I had a friend who was bank examiner -- an examiner of examiners. He left the business -- cocaine was rattling too many brains -- CFO's, examiners, accountants: as good as he was, he could not hold back a tide.
There was a major NY bank merger, two of the top eight .. why? Because the CEO of one was screwing the CIO of the other, so the story goes. Fiduciary duty, that.
A fundamental value of publicly traded stock, what is it? Graham and Dodd valuation? Can't hardly be done anymore.
Fiat money has swamped integrity and honest books out of the market.