If CEOs ought to be held responsible if the financial disclosure statements they sign are wrong, then are you saying that Ken Lay’s excuse that he was misled by other managers ought not to hold and that Kenny Boy ought to do hard time?

Are you confident that no CEO could be misled by crooked accountants or an errant CFO in any part of her or his business? For example, might a “lawyer’s mistake” result in a member of the board of directors filing notice eight months late of a major stock transaction that has the appearance of insider trading? Ought the Board Member do hard time?

No, Bush is once again over-simplifying vastly complex problems so he can use his Blame-and-Punish strategy to give us the delusion that they’re under control. Terrorist attack? Pin it on one evil-doer so we have someone to track down rather than addressing the complexities that give rise to terrorism. Widespread corruption in business due to the systemic flaws in the way our stock market works? Pin it on CEOs and threaten to jail them. Failing educational system? Reduce the problem to what can be diagnosed by federal, standardized tests … and then punish the schools that need the most help.

The problem is that even if we get rid of the evil-doers, we will still have a world in which the next evil-doer will seem to make sense to a whole bunch of people.

Some nice puns:

Slate’s “Today’s Papers” has the headline (written by Eric Umansky, one assumes): “Bush Whacks, Wall Street Wanes.” And Hal Blakely’s weekly W newsletter has the subject line “W Is Taking Stock.”

Categories: Uncategorized dw