Sunday, January 07, 2007
Ben Stein looks out for his money
And yours too, if you have any in the stock market. This week he picks on poor little corporate management burdened by the onerous demands of Sarbanes-Oxley, which demands that they conduct their businesses openly and honestly. It seems that Ben is a little upset that corporations were being forced to "register and do their initial public stock offerings in Europe" and "was supposedly too strict in requiring audits of internal controls". All of which brings Ben to the point of his outrage.
What’s more amazing is that anyone is even thinking of rolling back corporate controls to make life richer for Wall Street.Now Ben does not actually continue to the logical end of taxing these corporate swine to the max, but he does do a good job of illustrating just how out of whack Wall St has become in relation to the rest of the US and the world. But sadly, even Ben doesn't have a solution.
The Street just finished paying out tens of billions in bonuses — even as the Army and Marines are so starved for money that untrained soldiers are sent to Iraq because there is not enough equipment to properly train them first.
There is an acute shortage of Ferraris because of those bonuses, and there is a long waiting list for Lürssen yachts. But somehow, we are supposed to feel bad for Wall Street and for the class that has wrought so much mischief at the corporate helm, most recently with backdating.
But no committees of powerful corporate leaders and academicians are at work computing the moral and mortal costs of starving the Army and Marines of the equipment and training they need to do their jobs with minimal loss of life. What a world — where smart people worry about helping those suffering from a shortage of Ferraris, but hardly anyone outside the Pentagon notices the shortage of lifesaving equipment for the soldiers fighting our wars.
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