Perhaps Public Officials Should Look at Their Own Motives
It is ironic that public officials are crying foul over corporate greed when they were large beneficiaries of the dot-com wealth bubble, reaping a record level of tax revenue from exercised options.
If the corporate crooks are forced to return their ill-gotten loot to investors, shouldn’t the government also give back to investors the taxes it took in on this income?
When the real estate bubble bursts, leaving thousands of new homeowners in financial distress, the accusations of greed will be flying again from these same officials directed at the real estate, development and lending institutions.
Meanwhile, these officials do nothing to stem the explosion in home prices because this bubble is resulting in enormous amounts of property tax revenue for the state.
Are their motives much different than the corporate crooks they condemn?
Tom Burnes
San Clemente
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I find it ironic that many people have responded to the call for government to create accounting standards when the government accounting practices are leading to a problem far worse than anything seen so far.
Wake up, Social Security is Enron on a much grander scale.
Scott McFarlane
Simi Valley
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Reforms Meaningless Without Enforcement
So, Congress is shying away from hard-hitting securities reforms that would protect retirement funds [“1995 Tort Reform Act Said to Provide Safe Harbor for Fraud,” July 21]?
Why am I not surprised? When the Retirement Savings and Consumer Protection Act was on the California ballot in 1996, Wall Street, Silicon Valley and the “Big Six” accounting firms spent a record-setting $40 million to successfully defeat consumers’ and seniors’ attempts to protect their nest eggs.
These are the same corporate interests fighting meaningful consumer protection reform in Congress today.
The corporate-sponsored 1995 Tort Reform Act weakened investors’ protections that Congress enacted after the Great Depression. This law must be overturned: Not until corporate CEOs, directors, lawyers, accountants and brokers are held personally responsible for their illegal activities will our retirement funds be safe from excessive corporate greed.
New laws, however, are meaningless if not accompanied by diligent government enforcement. That’s why legal liability of everyone involved in corporate swindling is essential. Lawsuits hit corporate bandits where it hurts the most--in their pocketbooks.
Kelly Hayes-Raitt
Santa Monica
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No Reliable Barometer of Volatile Market
I almost dismissed your analysis “Fed Chief Now Blamed for Inflating Stock Bubble” [July 21] as just another benighted misjudgment of the reasons for the current decline in the stock market, because every commentator, analyst and economist from Alan Greenspan on down has it all wrong. You, though, have it all right.
Greenspan may or may not be responsible for the inflation and collapse directly, but you are right on when you say “... share prices were driven to stratospheric heights by the hope of further gain, rather than remaining tethered to something fundamental like a company’s profits.”
This is exactly why both President Bush and Greenspan completely miss the point in talking about the stock market turning around because the economy and productivity are good. The time is long since past when that had any relevance whatsoever.
That truth was tacitly acknowledged when the market and the analysts began to look not to how well the individual companies were doing to predict what the market would do, but to what interest rate the Fed would set.
That barometer wore out, though, when the Japanese dropped the interest rate to zero and their stock market continued to decline.
The fact is that the stock market will go up when the stock market goes up. This is true because nobody, or at least very few, invests in stocks because a particular company is being more efficient, has a great new product or a great new CEO.
Bill McKim
Sun City
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CEOs Should Perform a Reality Check
I read “For CEOs, It’s a Lot Lonelier at the Top” [July 18] and was surprised by some of the CEO complaints.
CEOs need to understand basic work facts:
* They are employees who have obligations and responsibilities.
* They are subject to the same rules, practices and laws that govern all company employees.
* Their performance is subject to review by their peers, subordinates, stockholders, employers and government agencies.
* They are responsible for their actions and the actions of their company.
For their service, they are compensated and recognized for their efforts. If CEOs are embarrassed or unable to cope with the demands of their occupation, they need to ask themselves one simple question: “Is this the right job for me?”
Thomas Song
Long Beach
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