Lessons from Enron fade (Enron bankruptcy 3 year anniversary)

[coda]

Op/Ed - USATODAY.com

Lessons from Enron fade

Op/Ed - USATODAY.com
Thurs Dec 02

A series of accounting scandals followed at firms ranging from telecom giant WorldCom to outpatient hospital chain HealthSouth. More recently, whole industries - among them the stock brokerages and mutual fund companies - have admitted to cheating investors. Just last October, three insurance executives pleaded guilty in a massive bid-rigging scheme.


Yet in the face of these ongoing and newly emerging scandals, some business groups are pushing for a rollback in reforms passed in the wake of Enron. These efforts threaten the growing sense among investors that companies are beginning to play by rules that help them and not corporate insiders.


<snip>


Among their tactics:


•Running to Congress. Mutual fund companies quietly inserted language into the recently passed spending law that is designed to slow the SEC's efforts to create more accountability from mutual fund boards. Earlier in the year, high-tech companies added language to a House bill that would have blocked a plan to require greater disclosure of stock-options grants. The measure died in the Senate.

•Fighting SEC rules. Business groups have managed to delay for months an SEC rule giving shareholders limited rights to name corporate directors if the existing board is unresponsive to their demands. The move is arguably the agency's single most important corporate-governance measure.


•Battling pension funds. Business groups have been fighting a pitched battle with state employee pension funds that have used their large blocks of stocks to lobby for corporate reforms. Such pressure resulted in the ouster Thursday of Sean Harrigan, president of California's largest pension fund and one of the nations' most vocal and powerful reform advocates.


more.....

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=679&ncid=742&e=1&u=/usatoday/20041202/cm_usatoday/lessonsfromenronfade

[phantom power]

1. There was *never* any "lesson" learned from Enron.

Nobody changed a damned thing, in reaction to Enron. No real improvement to regulations was made. Ken Lay is still a free man, and I'll be surprised if he's ever convicted. No politician, from George Bush on down, has suffered any political consequences for their relations with Enron.

It was, for all practical purposes, completely consequence-free for all the perpetrators, and the victims will never be compensated for what was stolen.

[zbdent]

2. Media: "Enron? What's that?"

Either the people don't know, or the majority that do know keep their mouths shut while they bask in the $$$$$.

[msgadget]

3. Actually,

some Republican said on Lou Dobbs last night that people may have thought Enron was bad but the UN scandal was worse. What's that mean? Enron behaved more ethically than the UN??

[phantom power]

4. It means: 'We want to keep you distracted, thinking about

other country's problems, instead of waking up to the problems in your own country."