On Wed, 5 Jun 2002 01:58:21 +0800, SM Ling wrote:
>"Professional" managers getting higher and higher pay for
>playing with numbers are the causes.  This is disgusting.
>
>I can't resist this time.   The "professional" managers game is
>playing in full-swing here.  Businesses and either paying top
>dollars for these people to come here, or emulating them
>exactly.  Good people are being asked to leave and replaced by
>new cheaper ones, so that short-term books can look good.  By
>the time, the damages are due, these people are long gone with
>fat bonuses.  Amazingly, they move on with even higher-pay to
>screw up more people and businesses.

Exactly. Lawyers, accountants (the top level ones) and
politicians (who are ALL lawyers, not coincidentally) are the
main culprits. Top managers at most companies are some
combination of the three. The one common thread between all these
groups is that they've taught themselves to think in terms of
what is technically legal, what they can get away with and what
can be "schmoozed over" in the media. Right and wrong no longer
have much meaning to them.

What the Enron executives did and what Arthur Anderson so gladly
helped them conceal was nothing short of a massive fraud scheme.
What they did to their employees was criminal and I hope the
major execs involved all serve long and hard prison time. They
all knew exactly what they were doing -- planned it all in minute
detail even, but yet kept justifying it to themselves all along
the way. Not one person had the courage to step up and say "this
is wrong". It's a sad commentary on our (big) business culture
here in the U.S.

Our legal and financial accounting system in the U.S. has been so
complicated and cluttered by lawyer-types that it makes
Enron-like scams very attractive to those who are morally weak.
Until we get back to a simpler, more straight forward set of
laws, accounting practices and tax codes, I'm afraid it's only
going to get worse.

Matt Pobursky
Maximum Performance Systems

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