1-25-02, Voice in the Crowd
Enron Isn't New
By Pete Chaney
IPS Features
“Greed is Good.” That was the motto of the Eighties. Junk bonds and corporate takeovers. Buy a company, bleed off its assets and dissolve it. The bottom line was all that mattered. Morality had no place in business. They made a movie called “Wall Street” displaying this philosophy.
So, Enron isn’t new.
They could have taken lessons from John D. Rockefeller,
Jay Gould, Jim Fisk and Cornelius Vanderbilt.
A hundred years before anyone made a fortune with junk bonds, these men
used a government at the peak of corruption to loot municipalities and the
public of millions. Rockefeller and
his Standard Oil were so powerful that railroads had to pay him a commission to
let them haul a competitor’s oil.
Politicians were bought and sold in a time before the
word lobbyist was in the dictionary. The
result was the same. Buy a
politician and run your business as you please.
The laissez faire—hands off—theory was in place.
When the public had all it could stomach, some decent
lawmakers became trustbusters. They
went after the monopolies, the trusts, the cartels. Regulations prevented the giant from killing off or gobbling
up the smaller companies. Competition
was protected and encouraged.
America did pretty well with the regulations.
Our country grew and prospered. In
fact, it prospered so well businesses and politicians decided they were
unnecessary any more.
Airlines were deregulated. Pan American, Eastern Airlines and other pioneers are mere
names in the history books now. But
there used to be safe plane service to almost every city. There was no jamming of traffic at a profitable airport while
other airports were neglected.
There were two major bus lines—Greyhound and
Trailways. Again, almost every city
and community had some kind of bus service.
And they ran on time. With
deregulation, a monopoly was permitted. The
competition that existed between the two companies dissolved and one company
emerged—without competition.
There had been strict guidelines on the media,
preventing one company to own all the facilities in an area. If someone wanted to own a TV station in a town, he might
have to divest himself of another media property.
Competition was important especially with those who controlled public
opinion. The media moguls appeared,
buying up all the printing presses and microphones and TV cameras they could
find. One giant trust might own
everything from the weekly shopper to the television network.
Gradually larger companies began to start taking over
smaller competitors, closing them down and jacking up the prices.
Our government protectors either looked the other way or encouraged them.
After all it takes a lot of money to run a campaign—and these companies
were big contributors. Your don’t
shackle the hand that pays you.
Now you have giants that own the movies you watch, the
newspaper or magazine you read, the radio station you listen to, the television
you watch or even the Internet service you use.
Who could possibly start a newspaper or magazine or
radio station to compete with such goliaths?
Henry Ford was pretty smart. He paid factory workers the unheard salary of $5 a day.
They bought Ford cars. Now
hundreds of thousands of people are losing jobs to computers, and computers
don’t buy cars.
Our protectors in Washington have forgotten the lessons
learned a hundred years ago about the power of cartels.
The government makes big headlines attacking Microsoft while they let the
gas companies merge faster than they can change the signs on the pumps.
That’s where a company like Enron comes in.
They buy political support, build a bogus pyramid of wealth and then
stagger a nation with the largest bankruptcy ever.
Where were our government regulators?
Busy taking campaign contributions?
Figuring out how to take Social Security money and put into Enron stocks?
Not one party is to blame, not one official.
It’s the system at fault, the system that gradually drifted away from
the legal and moral standards we once had.
We don’t need to go back to government regulations so
strict a business can’t breathe and expand.
We don’t need to have a system that allows companies to operate
cannibalistically. We do need some
middle ground between no control and too much control.
Mainly, we need to be sure the accountants verify a company’s stability
is honest—and that the corporation hasn’t bought the people we elected to
supervise them.
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