Vinson’s Variety: We are not tough enough on CEOs
Just the other day, I read an article titled “The nine lives of ousted corporate fat cat,” which added yet more revelation to the undeniable prophecy that America is going to hell in a hand basket – and heading there at mercurial speed!
The insightfully disturbing article talked about how “former executives of companies involved in some of the USA’s largest cases of corporate malfeasance – Xerox, Waste Management and Sunbean – still serve as senior directors at public companies.”
While the Enron collapse of a reputed $586 million shook the foundation of public trust in corporate America, WorldCom quaked that injured trust with a $3.9 billion crash -?both incidents, among numerous others, as just mentioned, completely devastating the existences and futures of thousands of hard-working, well-intended humans.
Here’s where salt gets added to the injury: As the title “The nine lives of corporate fat cats” implies, many of these ousted corporate CEOs “still serve as senior executives and directors at public companies.”
Paul Allaire, who was CEO at Xerox, now is a ranking board member at Sara Lee, Glaxo-SmithKline and Priceline.com. Phillip Rooney, former president of Waste Management, is now executive vice president of ServiceMaster.
The cover page of a recent edition of USA TODAY featured a picture none other than multi-millionaire, socialite, television personality Martha Stewart, accompanied by these words: “Where’s Martha?” A sane bet is the queen of domestic television is ducking the public scene, and for this reason: It now is a matter of public record that the once-thought-to-be squeaky clean Stewart allegedly – and illegally -?took advantage of privileged, inside information to unload her stock (a reputed $200 million) in ImClone, before it crashed, basically, the same scenario as Enron and the others.
However, that same USA TODAY article reported that “Hamptonites support Stewart.” (Among several other opulent dwellings in a variety of states, Stewart owns a lavish estate in East Hampton, New York, where only the very wealthy can afford to reside.) You can bet your bottom dollar the Hamptonites support Stewart, and the main reason is her top dollars.
She has the collective ability to impair or improve their social/professional status. She even hangs out with rapper impresario P. Diddy, the former Sean Puffy Combs, at upper-echelon social functions and sips Krystal from Sterling Silver drink ware. (Talking about some headline news, what if those two hooked up?!)
With what I’ve mentioned, here, the one related incident that infuriated me the most, though, was this one: (I’m doing this from memory, but I’m positive the numbers are correct, printed as such, anyway.)
A former CEO of a fallen securities/investments firm, while being investigated for alleged wrongdoings -?dumping his stocks while the value was up, knowing it was about to fall – is currently having an estate/mansion built that is being valued at $94 million, reportedly the most expensive in the United States. That’s the pinnacle of callous arrogance.
I feel it is safe to theorize that, metaphorically, “fat cats,” the extremely wealthy, indeed, have “nine lives,” whereas “alley cats” the working class, as a rule, have one life. For the most part, our system is based and thrives on money. In essence, the wealthy can afford better justice than the working class. I believe these examples bear out my theory.
(Mike Vinson is a Warren County columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].)