| March
4, 2002
Editorial
Column by Mike Schiller, author of "Created Equal"
Visit www.mikeschiller.com
Text & photo (c) 2001-2002 Mike Schiller
The
Left's Case For Wall Street
Why Liberals Should Stand By The Analysts
By
Mike Schiller
Ask any liberal what their view on government oversight of
major corporations is and the answer will, more often than
not, be something to the effect of "the government should
be responsible for performing oversight functions to ensure
corporations operate in a legal and ethical manner."
The
liberal philosophy is that uninvolved third party private
sector entities should not be charged with the responsibility
of playing watchdog on behalf of the U.S. Government, because
such would alleviate the US Government of it's responsibility
to perform such functions. That said, Congress seems
to be trying to abdicate itself of responsibility in the Enron
scandal by placing blame on private sector researchers who
did not detect a problem. Yet not one Senator acknowledged
the simple fact that analysts do not have subpoena powers
nor do they have any legal authority to demand documentation
from the companies they cover. This should be the government's
job, first and foremost. An analyst is a researcher, not an
investigator. That is an important distinction.
An
analyst's job is to issue opinions based on research that
considers many different factors about a company's present
and projected performance, and such opinions are not necessarily
dependant upon current share prices. If you were an analyst
and saw that the House of Representatives had just passed
a bill that would greatly benefit a particular company, whether
you agree with the legislation in the bill or not, you'd probably
believe the company was about to turn a profit. It's easy
to see how the analysts were fooled into believing Enron's
stock was going to rebound... both Bush and Congressional
Republicans played a role in fooling them.
 The
only private sector companies who are truly to be blamed in
Enrongate are Enron itself, and it's auditor Arthur Andersen.
Enron and Arthur Anderson committed the crimes. Enron
and Arthur Anderson should be held accountable. The government
agencies responsible for catching crooked corporate activity
failed in their responsibility to find out what was going
on, and report it to the American people. Those government
agencies should be held accountable for that failure. The
Bush Administration received advance warning of Enron's collapse.
No analyst received any such warning. The Bush Administration
withheld information. The analysts did not have access to
that information.
Bush
had a responsibility as an elected official to share any information
with the public which would serve the greater good. Bush had
a responsibility to Wall Street to share that information
with the analysts. Bush did not share that information with
the analysts nor with the public. Bush failed in his responsibility
to be honest with American people.
If
would be a severe abdication of government responsibility
to imply that any analyst should be blamed for a government
oversight failure. This is why it is inconsistent with liberal
ideology to criticize Wall Street for the Enron scandal. It
is the government who should be held responsible for failing
to demand that Enron disclose adequate public documentation
of its own finances. It is the government who should be held
responsible for failing to investigate Enron sooner. It is
the Bush administration who failed to inform the
analysts of Enron's impending collapse, not the other way
around.
Any
attempt by the Senate to convince the public otherwise would be
a disingenuous change in policy. It seems as if congress
using these hearings to disguise a rightward slanted
change in policy... less government accountability, more responsibility
placed on the shoulders of third party private sector companies. Such
a change in policy would be the opposite of everything most
people on the left stand for and believe in.
ACTION
POINTS:
SEND A FREE FAX TO YOUR SENATOR AT http://www.davidflanagan.com/FaxSenate/fax.html
AND TELL THEM YOU KNOW CONGRESS IS BLAME SHIFTING.
TELL YOUR SENATOR STOP BLAMING WALL STREET
FOR THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S CRIMES!!!
Send an email to your representative at www.house.gov/writerep/
Mike
Schiller is the author of "Created Equal?" a poem about
the denial of marriage rights to gays and lesbians. He has
completed his first book, "Sentences I Freed From
The Ropes They Tried To Weave Around Me." due out
this spring. He also runs a successful poetry web site,
www.mikeschiller.com
, which currently averages over 3,000 visitors per month.
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