Crush Corporate Crime

[checks-n-balances]

Crush Corporate Crime
by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

(snip)

"There are a lot of bad apples," (Damon Silvers, a lawyer at the AFL-CIO) said. "Maybe there are some sociopaths out there. But when you have a culture where people who are given control of most of the resources of our society believe there are in fact no moral limits, none, that every moral question can be answered on a spreadsheet, then what we have essentially seen in the last few years is doomed to repeat itself. But the solution to that cannot be putting sociopaths in jail. Because that is not the problem. The problem is systemic structures that encourage people to behavior in really destructive ways. It is not about good people and bad people, which is how President Bush framed it. It is about how we channel ordinary people. That's why I think the criminal issue, while important, is necessarily and unavoidably a limited solution."

Well, if the people who are "given control of most of the resources of our society believe there are in fact no moral limits, none," as Silvers puts it, then we have a nation of corporate sociopaths.

And all the informed business ethics courses and codes of professional responsibility are not going to make a dent in corporate crime.

But criminal prosecution might actually do the trick...Criminal prosecution is not just about catching and holding accountable a few bad apples. It is about society drawing clear lines of right and wrong, and then enforcing those social norms seriously.

(snip)

More at
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0330-23.htm

(Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor, http://www.multinationalmonitor.org. Mokhiber and Weissman are co-authors of On the Rampage: Corporate Predators and the Destruction of Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 2005).)

[Warpy]

1. Crushing corporate crime means crushing a few corporations

by withdrawing their charters and allowing them to exist only as large partnerships. There would be no more shielding of assets from suits, and stockholders would become directly responsible for corporate wrongdoing in proportion to the amount of stock they are holding.

This is the only thing that will clean this mess up. A corporation has no ass to kick or to jail. Only the death penalty can be imposed. Small stockholders would pay pennies on any judgement. Large stockholders would end up finding themselves very liable for the corporate wrongdoing that made them rich.

Simply jailing a few executives isn't the answer. Too many wealthy people wink at destructive corporations as long as the money keeps rolling in. Crushing a few of the worst by revoking their charter would do more to clean the mess up by making these jokers realize that yes, they CAN be hurt, than jailing every executive in the country in Club Fed would do.

My guess is that relatively few charters would be revoked before the whole rotten group cleaned up its act.

[Dover]

2. I agree that prosecution and the same jail time that other more petty

criminals get for their crimes, will put things in the proper perspective. A a major crime is being committed in white collar cases, and should be criminally prosecuted rather than settling for reimbursement and/or fee penalties (as the SEC does). None of the money Wall Street thieves steal (millions!) ever makes it back into the pockets of the little investor anyway.

Why should this thief get off, while the small fry who robs a 7-11 go to jail for 5 to 10 years or longer? It's classist. The punishment does not fit the crime.

Of course, when you are dealing with companies who are often bigger than most countries (at least monetarily) then they can often buy off the government justice system......or, as is more often the case, the government is infiltrated by the corporate world and is in place to promote their interests.