July 2, 2002
Like most boys who grew up in the late '60s and early '70s, I wondered why some toys never performed as expected.
Commercials showed the Johnny Lightning 500 action set, with its die-cast metal cars zipping around the plastic track and providing tons of fun. But when I got it for Christmas and tried to use it, the cars went flying every which way except on the tracks, it seemed.
"Camera tricks," my wise, all-knowing parents said. That's how the makers would get impressionable kids to believe toys would work as advertised. The result was anger and disappointment, and we thought we'd learned a lesson.
Boy, were we ever wrong.
Welcome to the wonderful world of accounting tricks.
Back when Enron collapsed, the media were filled with stories about tearful workers being ejected from their workplaces with little or no severance (mostly no) by security guards while top executives reaped retention bonuses.
According to The New York Times, it happened again. WorldCom's sales leaders were taking in the sun at Maui while the ordinary WorldCom workers were getting the bum's rush. Nice work if you can get it.
We're not supposed to be angry about all this suffering. After all, this is the genius of capitalism, the creative destruction that is supposed to power our economy. So far, though, it's been a continued effort to turn most Americans into minimum-wage, no-benefit laborers. Our elected officials fiddle about non-issues like the Pledge of Allegiance and prayer in schools while the economic underpinnings of our country are going "poof" before our very eyes.
Maybe there's hope. After getting themselves photographed next to children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, members of Congress have awakened from their June swoon and are going to look into this whole corporate swindling thing.
Even President Bush has become concerned about what is happening. Of course, it's nearing that tough exam called the "mid-term election" and the unemployed hordes are howling for a blue-blood bloodbath, so maybe it's time for a little compassion from the commander in chief.
I'd like to think that our political and business leaders will at least make an effort, but the cynic in me wonders if it'll be the same old dog-and-pony show: corporate leaders beating their breasts about their misdeeds, apologizing to the American public for lying, cheating and stealing, and then returning to their guard-gated mansions to ponder their sins and their severance.
Members of Congress will pontificate for the C-SPAN cameras, the bureaucrats who were supposed to protect us from the wolves will demand more laws and, ultimately, a few token and unenforceable measures will be threatened or perhaps passed. Corporations will cast their bread upon the Congress and any effective business legislation or regulation will die on the vine.
There are honest business people out there, and they are unfairly tarred with the same brush. The test of true integrity is not to hide bad news with accounting tricks but to be honest, up front and open. One less-than-optimal quarter is not the end of the world, and honesty is always the best policy.
Vincent F. Safuto is a copy editor for the Press Journal. Reach him at (Vincent.Safuto@scripps.com).
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