[ale] (Way OT) Politics and economy

[Irv Mullins]

On Thursday 17 October 2002 03:06 pm, SanMillan, Todd wrote:
> I don't follow you're logic.
>
>    A (dishonest politician) has a value
>
>    therefore, A is larger than B
>
> Following that logic, if you go by GDP, Sao Tome has a larger economy than
> the US

> http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/tp.html#Econ
> http://www.worldbank.org/data/countrydata/aag/stp_aag.pdf
> http://www.unctad.org/en/subsites/ldcs/country/profiles/saotome.htm
>
> Obviously, I don't have references to site concerning the size of B
> (dishonest CxOs).  If I had the answers I wouldn't have asked the question.
> But you only have the answers to one side.  I will give you credit for
> citing 3 references, always makes a stronger case than one.

And if you had said that you wanted an in-depth, statistically meaningful 
study, I would have requested a staff and adequate funding.

Lacking that, I can only give an opinion. I believe that 20 years ago, 
congresscritters would have been perhaps 10x more likely to be corrupt 
than the average CEO. 

Since then, the CEO's have been playing catch up. Once they noticed that 
no one - including gov't regulators - was paying much attention to what they 
were doing, they hatched various schemes to make themselves rich at the 
expense of their shareholders, employees, etc. Of course, the real blame 
here lies with the shareholders. Why pay a CEO hundreds of millions per year 
to head up *any* company, much less a company which is losing money?  

Looks like those schemes worked, up until a few months ago. Not many of 
those CEO have gone to trial yet, hence the number of convictions is less 
that the number of recently convicted congressmen.  Give 'em time, they'll 
catch up.

The real question still to be asked: what were the government regulators 
doing for the past 10 years?  Are they really as ineffective as other 
branches of government seem to be? (INS, FBI...) 

Irv



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