Bob Lewis nails it again. On the current round of accounting scandals and the regulation backlash to come...
- As we sit in the rubble of Enron, ImClone, WorldCom, Tyco, AOL, and other, as-yet-undiscovered or unpublicized corporate implosions, it's worthwhile to wonder which is the egg: the lack of accountability resulting from more than two decades of business deregulation, or the corrupt perspective of the corporate elite who acquired the resulting additional power.
- Lord Acton notwithstanding, I think the corruption came first.
- Without regulation, those businesses that resort to any tactic to win have the advantage over those that restrict their behavior to conventional codes of ethics.
- Consequently, ethical CEOs should welcome government regulation, not fight it.
- The goal of an ethical CEO would be efficient regulation, not deregulation.
- For more than two decades we've been subjected to unrelenting propaganda from the BIG/GAS (Business Is Great/Government and Academics are Stupid) contingent decrying any and all regulation as a fundamentally bad idea.
- Regulation, we've been assured, prevents American businesses from being competitive in world markets, harms productivity, and hampers profitability.
- The business community no longer has the credibility to be part of the process.
- Their goal will be minimizing any chance of new abuses, unfettered by considerations of how hard or easy it will be to comply.
- Every new regulation will result in reporting requirements, every reporting requirement will require new information technology, and nobody is going to care how hard it is to build.