AUSTIN -- The seminal historic event always affects the
language. Already we can see that Enron is of this shattering magnitude. A
stick-up artist goes into the Jiffy Mart to pull a heist. He whips his
heater and says to the clerk, "Put 'em up, this is an aggressive accounting
practice."
Or, you take your car to Ralph's Rip-Off Garage to get a 50 buck
problem fixed and, sure enough, he bills you $600. You say, "What an
aggressive accounting practice!"
Euphemism of the Year, and not even February yet.
The single most distinguishing feature of the Enron collapse is
that no one is yet sure the company did anything illegal. (Aside from
destroying documents, which arguably falls in the "seriously ill-advised"
category.) As we gyre and gimble in the wabe of Enron, we run across such
delightful items. Did you know that Enron's board twice voted to suspend its
own ethics code in order to create private partnerships? But how thoughtful
of them to suspend the ethics code first! Otherwise, they might have
violated it.
The funniest line of argument about Enron so far is, "This is
not a political scandal." Boy, there's a triumph of denial. Of course it's a
political scandal.
Business writers solemnly explain that Enron was in the business
of buying and selling everything from natural gas and electricity to -- as
the company grew increasingly delirious -- broadband telecommunications,
water and weather contracts. Also, legislators, congressmen, governors,
senators and presidents -- the company bought them with campaign
contributions and then sold them on fatally foolish policies. Anyone who
tells you campaign contributions only buy "access, not policy" needs to have
his nose rubbed in this one. Just to mention a few highlights:
-- Wendy Gramm's key decision as chair of the Commodities
Futures Trading Commission to deregulate energy futures markets. She has
been on the Enron board since 1992.
-- Sen. Phil Gramm received over $97,000 in Enron contributions
and passed legislation that exempted key parts of Enron from government
oversight.
-- President George W. Bush got $2 million in contributions from
Enron and its officers over the years, and numerous administration officials
have Enron connections. A key decision by the administration was to call off
the Clinton-led effort to stop international money-laundering (used by
terrorists, drug-traffickers, kleptocratic dictators and tax evaders) by
going after off-shore banks. As has been widely reported, Enron maintained
more than 800 offshore accounts in order to avoid taxes -- paying zero in
four of the last five years.
Much as we would love to gyre and gimble in the wabe of Enron
with the Jabberwock, there's some serious business here. If we are lucky,
plucky and raise lots of hell, Congress will probably make some improvements
in campaign finance laws, the conflict of interest on auditors also working
as consultants and oversight of private partnerships. And that will not be
enough.
As Bill Greider writes in the current issue of The Nation: "The
rot consists of more than greed and ignorance. The evolving new forms of
finance and banking, joined with the permissive culture in Washington,
produced an exotic structural nightmare. ... They converge, with kereitzu
(Japanese crony capitalism) -style back-scratching in the business of
lending and investing other people's money. The results are profoundly
conflicted loyalties in banks and financial firms -- who have fiduciary
obligations to the citizens who give them money to invest. Banks and
brokerages often cannot tell the truth to retail customers, depositors or
investors without potentially injuring the corporate clients that provide
huge commissions and profits from investment deals. Sometimes bankers cannot
even tell the truth to themselves because they have put their own capital
(or government-insured deposits) at risk in the deals."
It seems to me pointless to continue the argument over
free-market capitalism versus regulated capitalism. It is a theological, not
a practical, argument, requiring perfect faith from the free market
fundamentalists. The questions are, "What works?" and, "What doesn't work?"
Leaving corporations without government oversight doesn't work. "The
disorder writ large by the Enron story is this regular plundering of
ordinary Americans (through pension plans and mutual funds)," concludes
Greider.
And the greater danger is that as these enormous financial
institutions run into trouble, they'll take everybody with them. Greider
quotes Tom Schlesinger, executive director of the Financial Markets Center:
"A bank that has equity shares in a company that goes south can no longer
make neutral, objective judgments about when to cut off credit. The
rationale for repealing Glass-Steagall was that it would create more
diversified banks and therefore more stability. What I see in these
mega-banks in not diversification but more concentration of risk, which puts
the taxpayers on the hook. It also creates a financial sector less
responsive to the real needs of the economy."
When you hear people say Enron represents a "systemic" or
"structural" failure, this is what they're talking about. And that's what
needs to be fixed.
To find out more about Molly Ivins and read features by other
Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web
page at
www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2002 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
