Corporate Crime for Morons

We can�t all be astronomically wealthy. But we can all enjoy when the rich and powerful are facing financial ruin, public humiliation and, best of all, jail time. So it�s no surprise that the CEOgate story has gotten so big, temporarily eclipsing our neverending battle against terror and our self-righteous indignation over the Pledge of Allegiance.

It probably doesn�t help that both the President and Vice President are closely linked to big business and believe in their entitlement to secrecy so adamantly they refuse to turn over any documents anyone asks to see (like Bush�s SEC investigation files). Even Martha Stewart is being sautéed in insider-trading allegations, and if you can�t trust Martha Stewart, who can you trust? (Does this soufflé recipe really call for four eggs, or is Stewart just trying to help her friends in the poultry industry?)

Now what began with Enron last fall as simply the biggest corporate bankruptcy in U.S. history has spiraled into a steady stream of scandals, scaring the crap out of investors, spooking the already shaky economy and forcing the government to leap into regulatory mode. With elections a mere four months away, you can bet even the timid Democrats will keep the story alive, since it casts such a poor light on our MBA President and his big business-beholden party.

But as sexy as the corporate corruption scandal has become, why should you care about the shady (or straight-up illegal) accounting practices of a bunch of fat cats? Because even if you�re not a shareholder in Enron, WorldCom, Xerox or Martha Stewart Omnimedia�or even if you�re not a shareholder in any corporation�we all have an interest in the health of the economy. A bad American economy, it stands to reason, is bad for Americans.

Maybe even more important, if these CEOs are criminals, they deserve to be treated like criminals. Don�t let all the big business jargon or lawyerly explanations confuse you: Stealing billions from Wall Street investors is no different than stealing 50 bucks from a Main Street convenience store�in fact, it�s probably worse. If thieving corporate officers don�t do serious jail time, that�ll be an even bigger crime.

So, before your eyes begin to glaze over, let�s get right to the most important questions.

What the hell is going on around here?

It turns out corporate America is just as bad as your disgruntled bleeding-heart hippie uncle always said it was. Insider trading, questionable connections between �independent� auditing and high-priced advising, overstated revenues and creative bookkeeping are costing some shareholders their shirts while lining the pockets of the guys in charge of these companies. This has prompted investors to pull out of the stock market and hurt the economy. After all, who wants to hand over their savings to a bunch of suspected criminals? Investment is always accompanied by a certain amount of risk, but you shouldn�t have to take the additional risk that maybe the company you�re investing in is lying to you.

OK, but corporations have always been sketchy, haven�t they? I mean, if you wear Gap khakis and Nike sneakers, drink Starbucks coffee and eat McDonalds hamburgers, it�s like kicking a small business owner and third-world child in the face while pissing on the environment and making a financial contribution to the Devil himself. Big corporations have always been unspeakably evil�why is their bookkeeping such a big deal?

Whoa there, my rabidly consumer-conscious friend. While there may be some truth in what you say, we�re not talking about business practices that are merely morally or ethically questionable. In many cases we�re talking about businessmen purposely misstating their numbers to make their companies�and thus shares in them�appear more valuable than they actually are.

So they�re lying. That�s not cool, but it�s not like it�s illegal, is it?

Actually, it is. The various laws that apply to the security industry, complicated as they are, are based on a pretty simple concept, as the SEC lays out on its website: All investors, from a multibillion-dollar corporation�s vice president with stock options to your grandmother hoping to supplement her Social Security check with a low-risk mutual fund, should have equal access to basic facts about their investments. Therefore, the SEC requires public companies to disclose �meaningful financial and other information to the public.� The Wall Street economy wouldn�t work if people didn�t know what they were investing in.

Oh, so the scam comes in when they�

Deliberately overstate earnings to make a company�s stock seem more valuable than it really is, right. President Bush has characterized the current crop of scandals as unfortunate examples of a �few bad apples� in the business world, but it could be more like a rotten orchard. Some theorize that if you�re competing against a company that�s overstating, there�s a strong temptation to do so yourself. In the most heinous examples, this type of misstatement coupled with insider trading can lead to those in the know encouraging others to hold or increase their stocks to keep values high, then cash out and make a bundle before the company goes to hell and prices plummet.

The bastards! But wait, I don�t have any stock. What�s it to me?

Well, there�s the general disillusionment about corporate America. You�re going to think twice before letting a CEO of a major company hold your wallet for you in the future, aren�t you? But more important, just because you�re not a shareholder doesn�t mean you�re not a stakeholder.

Douglas Cole, a professor at Ohio State University�s Moritz College of Law, helps put it in perspective. �When you invest money in a new company, the company takes it and it and does things with it,� Cole said. �It builds plants, so there�s the hiring of contractors to build the plant. And of course once the plant is built, they need people to work in the plant, and managers to manage it, and there may be, depending on the business, some type of distribution network involved.�

So less investment leads to less development, which can lead to less new jobs, or fewer old jobs staying around. And keep in mind, more people in America own stock right now than at any point in the past.

Oh. I guess it�s a small world after all, isn�t it?

Sure is. And it�s not just American investors who are losing confidence in the system. If Wall Street can�t be trusted, the rest of the world may be just as hesitant to invest their money here as we are. That means billions of foreign dollars potentially going into some other country�s economy.

�It is vital to our economic recovery that we address investor confidence,� Cole explained. �America has to be a place people feel safe investing capital, and remember the U.S. financial market is just a part of the world�s financial market. Foreign investors can take their money and put it in Argentina or Australia or England. There are all kinds of places capital can go.�

The media won�t shut up about this stuff. Is it politically motivated?

It is, for better or worse. Remember, it�s an election year, and short of a pair of genetic material-soaked blue dresses showing up, Bush and Cheney�s big business scandals are about as juicy as Democrats could ask for. Elected politicians in both parties want to look like they�re doing something to address their constituents� concerns. Hence Congress� plans to regulate the securities industry and President Bush�s big speech on Wall Street last Tuesday.

Among the President�s proposals are the creation of �a financial crimes SWAT team,� doubling the maximum prison term for certain types of fraud to 10 years and a prohibition on executives borrowing money from their own publicly owned companies. One point everybody agrees on is that the SEC must be given more money; the only argument is how much more they�ll be given (currently, the proposed figures are $100 and $300 million).