Unless you have been living on an isolated desert island for the past three years – not an entirely bad thought – you would have read of how the collapse of scandal-ridden firms like Enron and WorldCom contributed to the bloodbath in the world’s stock markets.
As the tales of corporate accounting hijinks and outright fraud surfaced, the Cassandras took to print and the airwaves to inform us of how these tales proved that the equity-crazed Anglo-Saxon form of capitalism was vulnerable to such behaviour. Of course, what these tales proved was that the world’s modern capital markets can and will punish malefactors harshly. They certainly did.
Well, corruption is hardly the sole preserve of corporations. And surely there are few more corrupt institutions that the European Commission, as shown by this story in today’s Financial Times newspaper. But whereas businessmen at Enron and elsehwere were swiftly brought before the courts, it seems that corruption in the bureacracy of the EU is proving much tougher to clean up.
To which I would add, why is anyone surprised?
While the corporate accounting scandals have been cases of actual fraud and malfeasance, this report only seems to be saying that their accounting system lacks sufficient controls to catch fraud or malfeasance, should it occur.
The U.S. Government’s various departments are frequently subject to similar charges. I doubt if there is any organization run by professional bureaucrats in which is not the case. I’d love to be able to fully audit the U.N.
But the point is, folk like commissioner Neil Kinnock, who could have been our frickin prime minister, help us, has been accused of actually trying to frustrate exposure of malpractice and much else at the Commission. Hence my point.
More broadly, of course the problems at the Commission are similar to many in other governments and international bodies like the UN.
More reason to sweep them away into the ash can of history.
Governments routinely get away with accounting practices that would put anyone in private industry into jail. Most especially national governments.
Those who don’t get this are irritating to say the least.
“But whereas businessmen at Enron and elsehwere were swiftly brought before the courts”
Did I miss something here. Was Kenny Boy indicted? Has any charges been laid against Vinson and Elkins? How many times did AA cook the books before Enron?
While I agree with your point that the EU needs “cleaning up” your inference that Anglo-Saxon capitalism is somehow superior is not a valid point. Corruption is corruption is corruption and it is ALL bad and needs to be stamped out. There is no one form better or worse.
“But whereas businessmen at Enron and elsehwere were swiftly brought before the courts”
Did I miss something here. Was Kenny Boy indicted? Has any charges been laid against Vinson and Elkins? How many times did AA cook the books before Enron?
While I agree with your point that the EU needs “cleaning up” your inference that Anglo-Saxon capitalism is somehow superior is not a valid point. Corruption is corruption is corruption and it is ALL bad and needs to be stamped out. There is no one form better or worse.
“But whereas businessmen at Enron and elsehwere were swiftly brought before the courts”
Did I miss something here. Was Kenny Boy indited? Has any charges been laid against Vinson and Elkins? How many times did AA cook the books before Enron?
While I agree with your point that the EU needs “cleaning up” your inference that Anglo-Saxon capitalism is somehow superior is not a valid point. Corruption is corruption is corruption and it is ALL bad and needs to be stamped out. There is no one form better or worse.
“But whereas businessmen at Enron and elsehwere were swiftly brought before the courts”
Did I miss something here. Was Kenny Boy indited? Has any charges been laid against Vinson and Elkins? How many times did AA cook the books before Enron?
While I agree with your point that the EU needs “cleaning up” your inference that Anglo-Saxon capitalism is somehow superior is not a valid point. Corruption is corruption is corruption and it is ALL bad and needs to be stamped out. There is no one form better or worse.
AA was criminally prosecuted, and has been “executed.” I believe criminal charges are pending in global crossing and enron, the civil liability in these cases will take 2 years to work through the courts. In the mean time the market has absorbed the hit, and is moving on.
Unfortunately, the EU remains unreformed, and is unreformable.
When Belgium entered the EU, I very much hoped that it would force the notoriously corrupt Belgian politicians and bureaucracy to clean up their act a bit.
This happened, although saying they’re more transparent now than they used to be is damning with faint praise. But unfortunately, the learning process has been quite mutual.
The Chinese Government has been on a bit of a purge of corruption by officals for a couple of years now.One of their punishments is somewhat quaint,albeit crude,the firing squad.Which brings us to the new EU constitution……….errr…..its our property not “theirs” !!
A cassandra is someone who utters TRUE prophecies and is doomed to never be believed.
The commission isn’t corrupt; that requires competence. it is just very good at losing money.
BTW This is not meant to be taken seriously.
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I’m absolutely of the view that free-market abuses are likelier to be dealt with sooner than centralist, Continental-government-organised abuses. Just look at the continuing lying over Credit Lyonnais compared with the way the British government swiftly, clinically forced Barings Bank to sell to ING for one pound after its [smaller] cash crisis.
But that’s exactly why the Financial Times’ arrogant sloppiness [of all things, with numbers] wearies me so much.
All the previous ten, eleven Samizdata commenters, and God knows how many FT “editors”, have looked at the first sentence of that article linked to here too – equating 96 billion euro with 105 million dollars – and noticed nothing.
A couple of years ago I bought a copy of the FT which got the silver price wrong twice [by a factor of a hundred] on the front page, mispelled a European Finance Minister three different ways, and gave him and his country’s central bank chief two different ages [“…both men are in their late thirties…”, “…both men are in their early forties…”] on two adjacent pages.
Is everyone on drugs or something? Help me understand.
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…of course 106 “million” dollars. And I’m not even getting paid for this.