What’s your opinion on the Accounting/Stock scandals?

Personally this kind of scares me and pisses me off as much as the 9/11 attack. Not for loss of life but for the effect it can have on the country. As a matter of fact I think the heads of Enron, Worldcom and the like are doing as much to hurt this country as the terrorists. It really pisses me off that these guys have the nerve to stand there and say they didn’t know the accountants were doing this. These guys make the big bucks not because they work harder then any of us but because they have a huge responsibility. Part of their responsibility is to know the financial status of their company. Especially when the company belongs in part to stockholders. I have worked in high positions in companies and dealt with auditors. For anyone that does not know how a corporation works, don’t let these people BS you. These guys should have and did know exactly what their companies were doing.

The worst part is they led companies that are so large that they directly affect Americas financial status. This had to be obvious to them (and the government too). To me this makes their crime even worse, I would even say it borders on treason because it is basically doing the same thing the terrorists wanted to do, which is topple out financial system. Now I know these CEOs were out for money and not to topple America’s finances but what they did is having such an effect. If the SEC (the people that are supposed to police public companies) is short handed, you would think they would at least audit these very large companies that have a profound affect on our economy.

Not only did these “leaders” hurt the employees but since most of us today will rely on a 401k or similar retirement plan these guys hurt almost all of us. By dragging down the entire stock market they directly effected the amount of money you will receive when you retire. Not to mention stockholders.

The only way to control these companies is to hold the leaders accountable. There had better be some big jail time dished out here or folks are going to loose complete faith in the system. I am upset that the President seemed to wait for public opinion to get riled up before he started talking more about this.

I worked for a company for 15 years that went out of business due to poor management. This company had been around over 100 years and made it through the great depression without laying off a single person. Now it’s gone, 5000+ employees were out of work, the state had to pay millions in unemployment and the head of the company got 15 million dollars and is in North Carolina playing golf. So he was rewarded for failing.

That is the kind of thing that needs to change. Also, all the financial loopholes have to be closed. For example, the whole idea of being able to legally hide money in offshore accounts is ludicrous.





What do you think?

I'd never really thought about it like that. Very interesting point you make, I'm not too sure I know how to help the problem, we'd all like to get rich, most of us never will, me especially. I'm really glad to be an American and I just hope that we can withstand these problems as we did the attacks on 9/11.

Scot