I agree with Bill Safire yet again. Although I’d love to see the Enron scandal embroil the White House and others in the administration, it’s notable that for all the connections and the money sloshing around the administration didn’t act to save Enron or its friend Ken Lay in the hour of need.
Despite the absence of political skullduggery (so far), there are certainly plenty of corporate questions to be raised. I liked Gretchen Morgenson’s line: “What the world is now awakening to is that the Enron Corporation was not much of a company, but its executives made sure that it was one hell of a stock.” And Safire is certainly right echoed in a number of editorials in the Financial Times that the role of the auditors, Andersen, needs a particularly glaring spotlight.
Incidentally, I notice that Ken Lay has quietly been deleted from the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum.
Like many important stories, it’s extraordinary that a massive trade conflict between Europe and the US is brewing in virtual silence.
The WTO seems nearly certain to rule against the US on the purported subsidies US corporate tax laws provide to exporters. According to Robert Zoellick, the marathon-running US trade representative, the ruling will unleash “a nuclear weapon on the trading system”.
The usual form in such disputes is a period of tit-for-tat sanctions which harm basically innocent companies and workers, rather than the offending nation followed by some face-saving compromise. Let’s hope sense precedes battle this time.