Scandals lead execs to 'Atlas Shrugged'

USA Today ^ | 9/23/02 | Del Jones

[TomServo]

In these post-Enron days of corporate scandal, some of the millions of copies of Atlas Shrugged that have been sold over 45 years are being dusted off by executives under siege by prosecutors, regulators, Congress, employees, investors, a Republican president, even terrorists.

[tomkat]

If you're looking to attack a group of people and still be politically correct, executives are about your last target, says Bond, who has read the book twice.

aside, perhaps, from the group of which most of them are a subset - wasp males in the 30-50 age range ...

[Tijeras_Slim]

The characters in Shrugged conducted competition providing goods and services. The 90's "tycoons" only competed to see who could pull the biggest scams and provided nothing. I wonder what Hank Rearden would have thought of a dot com millionaire (while they lasted)?

[Diddle E. Squat]

I wonder what Hank Rearden would have thought of a dot com millionaire (while they lasted)?

Ping and ask him.

[Tijeras_Slim]

LOL! Where ARE my manners?

[HamiltonJay]

hahahaha... sorry guys, many many many of the execs, particularly those that "came up" during the bubble are indeed simply greedy thieving bastards, they are not morally working to create a better world, but were and still are shill scam artists who conned manny an honest american out of everything and will never pay a price for it.

Don't tell me Enron, Tyco, Adelphia, Worldcom, or any other number of dot bomb executive staffs were moral. I don't believe all business men are immoral, but please don't tell me the latest crop of "execs" are great leaders... most especially in technology sector are shills at best.

[raybbr]

I know I'm going to flamed for this, but: You cannot convince me that a CEO making millions, while wanting to pay his employees minimum wage, is moral.
iFor example, since the Enron scandal, CEOs are refusing to sit on boards of other companies, thereby withholding their business savvy from the market. About 60% of executives are turning down offers to serve on boards vs. 25% a year ago, Christian says

So what? If a company can't make do with the members of its own board then they need to hire competent people.

"Our government is leaping forward trying to legislate morality, which is a joke," says Patterson,

Oh, really? Well, finally the liberal morality police have penetrated the corporate boardroom. They've been trying to do this to the common man for the last four decades. Tell me these people are not out of touch!

Before I get accused of being a liberal troll let me tell you I vote a straight republican ticket. However, I fear for our country's future when city leaders tout the opening of a new mall as good for the area because it creates jobs. What happened to creating good solid jobs like steel mills, printing houses, garment factories, etc. Service jobs are not real jobs. There is nothing tangible to back them up.

[A_perfect_lady]

Oh how I would love to see Atlas Shrugged made into a movie. Ralph Fiennes as Hank Reardon, that blond from Mission to Mars as Dagny, George Clooney as John Galt.... ah, what fun!

[RJCogburn]

Thanks for posting this

"The Atlas Society, devoted to Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead and other fiction by Ayn Rand"

http://www.atlassociety.org

[babyface00]

The problem is taxes, taxes, taxes.

We tax and regulate the small business and successful individual to death. This system makes large corporations more economically viable than small businesses and sole proprieterships.

Because ownership is diluted, there is less incentive for managers and CEOs to take a moral position on their company. The beuroacracy hides, and even rewards the immoral individual.

Stop punishing individual success and this would fix itself

[dogbyte12]

I do not begrudge wealth. People who start a company, work their tails off, and become wealthy are ok in my book. That is not what has been happening the last quarter century though. The Bill Gates are exceptions to the rule. Every decade we seem to have a bunch of corrupt people making money off the sweat of others. The 80's saw the junk bond kings, the 90's saw the insider IPO's, the internet bubble, now we are getting Enron's and Global Crossings. I do resent these folks their wealth.

Getting an insider deal on an IPO, that gets artificially hyped by the corrupt business media, then dumping it when it gets to a ridiculous price does not make one a great person. Anybody can make money that way, all you have to do is know somebody. There is no sweat, no intellectual property, it is just knowing the right guy at Goldman Sachs who is handling the IPO.

[RJCogburn]

What happened to creating good solid jobs like steel mills, printing houses, garment factories, etc.

Competition.

[jpl]

I wonder what Hank Rearden would have thought of a dot com millionaire (while they lasted)?

I'll bet that if Rearden ran a major airline today he wouldn't refuse to allow the pilots to arm themselves, then go whining to the government for another multi-billion dollar bailout.

[RJCogburn]

"A 1998 documentary about Rand's life was nominated for an Academy Award and played to sold-out venues"

http://www.asenseoflife.com/

[scoopscandal]

George Clooney as John Galt??? No way.

Actually, I think that they'd have to find an unknown actor with a great presence to pull of John Galt's character...'cause I'll tell ya right now, if they had some leftist cheeseball play the character of John Galt...it would totally kill the whole movie for me and all the other people who have imagined this man, John Galt, as something larger than life.

The character of John Galt goes WAY beyond the eye-candy factor.

Just my two cents.

Best Regards,

[raybbr]

Do you mean competition or the driving need to soak every penny of profit out of company so the board members get theirs first?

[section9]

Oh, really? Well, finally the liberal morality police have penetrated the corporate boardroom. They've been trying to do this to the common man for the last four decades. Tell me these people are not out of touch!

The object of the excercise of any corporation, if it wants to last, is to produce goods and services that can be sold at a market price. The likes of Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling looted from their companies and eventually led to the collapse of Ponzi schemes like Enron, Worldcom, and Global Crossing.

It has nothing to do with a "liberal morality police". Liberals are interested in corporate morality not for its own sake, but only to the extent that liberal politicians have access to corporate money. You'd have to be a fool to believe that modern liberals (at least the politicians) are concerned with how their big contributors treat their employees.

Before I get accused of being a liberal troll let me tell you I vote a straight republican ticket. However, I fear for our country's future when city leaders tout the opening of a new mall as good for the area because it creates jobs. What happened to creating good solid jobs like steel mills, printing houses, garment factories, etc. Service jobs are not real jobs. There is nothing tangible to back them up.

A shopping center takes construction to build and maintain. A mall is an area where goods and services are sold. Goods and services have to be produced to be sold in that mall. They are not necessarily a bad thing. And service jobs are real jobs. No economy can exist without them.

Industrial jobs are even better, as they produce real wealth. Industrial jobs are in the midst of changing, however. The way steel is produced is different from the way it was produced in the fifties, for instance. You are proceeding from the assumption that no industrial jobs are being created in the United States. That is incorrect.

Rand's phiosophy was, of course, based on the belief that rational self-interest was in and of itself good. I continue to believe that she was fundamentally correct about human nature in that regard. However, her atheism turns me off as atheism is, at bottom, a materialist doctrine.

Rand understood that corruption occurs in all places. She came, after all, from the monumentally corrupt Soviet Union. While one cannot avert one's eyes from the problems of real fraud in the boardroom, however, I would argue that most reforms in this era will occur as a result of companies' necessity to be transparent to attract investors, rather than as a result of government action.

Be Seeing You,

Chris

[gdc61]

i wonder how many people here actually read Atlas Shrugged? Its parallel to today with capitalism being attacked from both the far left and far right ? it wouldn't take much for people like Gates to pick up shop and move to more friendly locale.

[jjm2111]

The reason why there's no steel mills and garment factories anymore is because American Labor is too expensive. Why pay some union guy $45,000 a year when you can pay an Indian $2500 a year or a Chinese $1500 a year?

The clowns who stole money from their shareholders and sent their companies down in flames aren't achievers in the Hank Rearden style. They are moochers who added nothing to their businesses.