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Shape up, corporate executives -- or else
© St. Petersburg Times I guess I am heartened that George W. Bush is going to talk to us all tonight on the subject of corporate responsibility. That would be the same George W. Bush who, in 1990, failed to disclose selling stock he owned in a company until 34 weeks after it had taken place, saying first that he had filed the notification and government regulators had lost it and then, according to the Associated Press, saying it was a clerical mistake by company lawyers. The $840,000 stock sale took place two months before the company involved reported millions of dollars in losses and its stock plunged from $4, when Bush sold it, to $1 by the end of that year. Of course the prez is no Martha Stewart -- can't decoupage worth a darn -- and the SEC took no action in the Bush case. A lousy $840,000 looks like the senior discount at Golden Corral next to the $3.8-billion WorldCom mess, and I don't think they've gotten around yet to adding up who got how much in the Enron scandal. That would be Enron, an outfit with a lot of access to the White House and especially to the vice president. All in all, George W. Bush addressing the American people on corporate responsibility is a lot like Bill Clinton speaking on marital fidelity or G. Gordon Liddy writing fair campaign practices legislation. Why, exactly, should we listen? As I understand it, he is going to propose that chief executives whose companies vastly inflate profits, or underreport losses or expenses, be held criminally responsible. Funny, I thought fraud was already against the law. What we will get tonight is more window dressing of the type we have already gotten on subjects like campaign finance reform and national health care. There will be considerable fanfare, much tap dancing and a presentation with roughly as much substance (but not nearly as entertaining) as a Baywatch rerun. Stealing billions from investors and leaving rank-and-file employees to starve while their millionaire bosses whine about having to sell summer homes that cost more than those employes will earn in a lifetime, we are sure to be told, is bad . . . bad. Leaving the economy in a mess that imperils the savings of millions of Americans, we will be told, is a bad thing . . . bad. Everyone should stop doing that, and if they don't, the administration is going to get really mad, and they mean it this time, and they won't ever accept any more hard or soft money contributions from big business. Okay, I made that one up. Just wanted to see if you were still reading. I have recently discovered that I have an almost supernatural power that I am hereby threatening to wield on corporations that don't comply. All that has to happen for a company's stock to plummet, I have discovered, is for me to buy stock in it. I can knock 10 percent off a stock price simply by going online to check its ticker symbol. By purchasing shares in a mutual fund, I can have an across-the-board effect on every single stock the fund owns. I am prohibited from writing about stocks that I own and, besides, if you knew and dumped your shares, it might qualify as insider trading. My first victims are going to be firms that make their rubber-meets-the-road employees take drug and polygraph tests to make sure they never stole a pack of gum -- and then make $25-million severance deals with larcenous executives. Then I'm going to take out an environmentally irresponsible outfit or two, disembowel any firm that sponsors the Jerry Springer Show and take aim at the folks who employ the "can you hear me now?" guy. I have nothing against the company, but the commercial irritates me. I didn't seek this strange ability I have. It just suddenly dawned on me that I have it. Only the fact that I am a good American has kept me from using my power for evil and responding to government inanity, like nonsense flurries over the Pledge of Allegiance, by using the ultimate weapon: increasing my regular purchase of U.S. Savings Bonds. I hope I still feel like that after tonight's presidential address.
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