It isn’t just a matter of what’s been done. It is also a matter of why it has been done. Back in 2004 I began worrying about the kind of greed that was pushing CEO’s of top corporations to manipulate their salaries up to 400 to 1,000 TIMES that of their low level employees. Back in Reagan’s day they seemed quite prosperous with only a 40 times differential. When Grasso left the New York Stock Exchange he tried to take the entire profit of the Exchange for himself. After he was forced to give some of it back he still left with $140 million. Then there was Enron. And the entire meltdown of Wall Street in 2008 killed Countrywide Financial whose “smart” CEO lowered his 2007 of $142 million to a mere $103 million, Lehman Brothers CEO raised his salary from $52 million to $72 million in the same period. No wonder NO ONE wanted to bail them out. So John McCain was right when he said GREED was the issue.
So my question is, what is wrong with our society, or our methods of child rearing and education that such monumental greed is developed in our top business leaders? Some of them actually used to want to create something valuable and useful.
I think Enron was the sobering moment for me- or the one I learned the most from. I began to understand that the likes of Jeff Skilling really and TRULY see themselves as immune from the rules of the road. They were honestly surprised when they were held accountable.
What’s wrong with our society is a pretty complicated question- but in terms of this topic I don’t think it’s so much as what’s WRONG -since greed is as old as humanity and it’s not going anywhere. What seems to be happening is an increasing ease of getting away with robbery. As long as the government/Fed/and business sleep together- we will continue to see this.