Congress should:
- not use the Enron scandal as an excuse to clamp down on the
Free Market with more government regulation.
- not use the Enron scandal as an excuse to deny freedom to
Americans to plan their own retirements.
Enron employees took the advice of Enron executives and
invested all their retirement funds in Enron stock, not knowing
that Enron executives had "cooked" the books and
covered up imminent collapse.
If we abolished the government
monopoly on education, we would have competitive schools
raising the standard of competence in each new generation of
Americans. Not only would students learn how to read and write,
they would learn the rudiments of the adult world, such as never
invest your entire retirement portfolio in one single stock.
Enron employees were victims of the government
-- an education monopoly which leaves most graduates unable to
read an investment prospectus, and unable to think competently
for themselves.
Abolishing the government education monopoly would also leave
parents free to send their children to schools which taught
respect for "the Laws of
Nature and of Nature's God," which would dramatically
reduce the number of businessmen ripping people off and cooking
books. America's Founding Fathers warned in the strongest terms
against strengthening the government while weakening the
influence of religion and
morality, which is exactly what the federal government has
been doing for the last 60 years.
Enron's spectacular rise to profit is largely a creation of
the government. Enron dealt in provision of electricity, a
government monopoly without the usual competition and public
accountability found in deregulated industries. Enron worked not
only with U.S. governments, but with the governments of India
and other Asian nations. U.S. involvement in Afghanistan may
have been in part a plan to bail
out Enron's failures in Asia, as Enron had many strings to
pull in U.S. government.
The Government is more Corrupt than Enron
- Enron's
Wake
- Less
Government Regulation and More Laissez-faire Required to
Prevent Further 'Enron' Scandals
- Corporate
Taxation and Who Pays
- Regulation
Gave Us the Enron Scandal
- Business
Reform Foundation
- Lessons
from Enron
- A
Silly Comparison to Enron
- Which
is worse: WorldCom or Congress?
- The Real
Solution to Business Misconduct
- Walter E. Williams : Lessons From the Bailout - Townhall.com | Wednesday, October 8, 2008
In 2002, when the Enron and WorldCom scandal broke, the Congress held hearings and some chief executives were jailed. Who did what was the big story in the major news media almost every night. Congress rushed to enact the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, also known as the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act of 2002. The act placed unnecessary, onerous and costly accounting standards on American businesses. The Enron and WorldCom debacle is a drop in the bucket compared to the financial mess that Congress has created through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, in the name of "affordable" housing. Have you heard Congress calling for hearings? They haven't called for hearings because many of them, both Democrats and Republicans, receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars, were in cahoots with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. If Americans are going to be on the hook to bail out these government-sponsored enterprises, at the minimum congressional hearings ought to be held to find out who did what and when.
Foundation for Economic Education
Enron and Social Security
Doesn't the Enron scandal show the dangers of privatizing
Social Security? No.
A recent poll indicates that a majority of Americans believe
they could do a better job of balancing the government budget
than the government does. The government does not seem to be
bound by the ordinary budgetary considerations that ordinary
families have to live by.
"Lawmakers realize the importance of honesty in accounting,
so they have established clear accounting guidelines for others
to follow. However, they, themselves, go by a much more relaxed
standard. If a businessman were to go by the standards lawmakers
apply to themselves, he would wind up in jail." So writes
Ken Connor in HUMAN
EVENTS ONLINE -
Congress Is Beating Enron at Its Own Game.
Consider this op-ed from the Los Angeles
Times in June of last year:
Here's
what California Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer said at a press
conference about Enron Corp. Chairman Kenneth Lay: "I
would love to personally escort Lay to an 8-by-10 cell that he
could share with a tattooed dude who says, 'Hi, my name is
Spike, honey.'"
Here's why Lockyer should be
removed from his office of public trust: First, because as the
chief law enforcement officer of the largest state in the
nation, he not only has admitted that rape is a regular
feature of the state's prison system, but also that he
considers rape a part of the punishment he can inflict on
others.
Second, because he has publicly
stated that he would like to personally arrange the rape of a
Texas businessman who has not even been charged with any
illegal behavior.
Lockyer's remarks reveal him to
be an authoritarian thug, someone wholly unsuited to holding
an office of public trust.
But his remarks do have one
positive merit: They tell us what criminal penalties really
entail.
Contrary to some depictions of
prisons as country clubs, they are violent and terrible
places.
Tom G. Palmer, 'Hi,
My Name Isn't Justice, Honey,' and Shame on Lockyer, L.A.
Times, Wednesday, June 6, 2001
Businessmen have only persuasion as a weapon. Government has
the power of the sword. Lord Acton said, "Power tends to
corrupt." Government power-holders become less and less
accountable, less hesitant to use their power, even against
those who have done no wrong or those who have not yet been
convicted by a jury of their peers of wrongdoing.
This is why monetary power in the hands of Enron executives
is less harmful that political power in the hands of bureaucrats
and politicians.
next: Campaign Finance, Corruption and
the Oath of Office
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