Quote:
Originally posted by fable
Donald Lamb, Managing Editor of the US Financial Times, was just on a radio program I was listening to. He referred to 52 executives who walked away with $10,000,000 in bonus money from bankruptcies they were directly or undirectly responsible for, through the over-valuation of poorly-run mega-corporations. He specifically targeted the stock option incentives that CEOs have been offered over the last decade, based on stock value, as responsible. As a result, a bunch of people moved in who artificially inflated the funds, made a killing, then sold high and moved out, taking their bonuses as the bubble burst. None of these incentives, of course, are addressed in the bill Dubyah recently signed into law.
What do you think should be in the system to prevent this kind of thing from continuing to occur? How would you structure the law? What penalties would you attach to these Barons of Bankruptcy? |
The man who sponsored the bill, Senator Paul Sarbanes (D-MD), could have tried to address the problem but he was too busy coming up with ways to give trial lawyers more ways to make money off of the scandals (resulting in more campaign contributions to the good senator). I'm all for punishing crimes but I find it strange that we send "businessmen" to jail for 20 years but child molesters get light or suspended sentences or get sent to mental hospitals. But I digress.
The real problem I think is that the accounting and tax rules are too convoluted and arcane. Make the accounting rules clear and transparent, flatten the tax code, and punish fraud. The new bill only adds to the problem by putting another layer of rules on an already complicated system.
On a related note, why has Lieberman basically shut down the Enron investigation? I smell a coverup.