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At a time when most of the pub-lic believes lead-er-ship of all sorts, espe-cially polit-i-cal, to be weak, we should not focus on find-ing scape-goats but rather on assum-ing account-abil-ity to help fix problems.
As detailed in his book, Bad Money: Reck-less Finance, Failed Pol-i-tics, and the Global Cri-sis of Amer-i-can Cap-i-tal-ism and in the Harper’s Mag-a-zine arti-cle, “Num-bers racket: Why the econ-omy is worse than we know”, Ken Phillips doc-u-ments how since the 1960s Wash-ing-ton has been play-ing with the offi-cial sta-tis-tics by which the health of our econ-omy and soci-ety are mea-sured in order to avoid the per-cep-tion of their legacy as hav-ing done a poor job. I bor-row from the Harper Mag-a-zine article:
“The cor-rup-tion has tainted the very mea-sures that most shape pub-lic per-cep-tion of the economy—the monthly Con-sumer Price Index (CPI), which serves as the chief bell-wether of infla-tion; the quar-terly Gross Domes-tic Prod-uct (GDP), which tracks the U.S. economy’s over-all growth; and the monthly unem-ploy-ment fig-ure, which for the gen-eral pub-lic is per-haps the most vivid indi-ca-tor of eco-nomic health or infirmity.”
The point is that: as getting-elected has become the pri-mary busi-ness of politi-cians, less and less have we been able to trust any-one in polit-i-cal lead-er-ship to make the dif-fi-cult but cor-rect deci-sions. Evi-dence of this trend is all around us in the state of our econ-omy and soci-ety. No one in office wants to take respon-si-bil-ity for exces-sive and prof-li-gate bor-row-ing and spend-ing for fear of being vil-i-fied as anti-growth, anti-jobs, anti-happiness or anti-anything that their polit-i-cal com-peti-tors believe pleases peo-ple in the cur-rent moment.
In the aforementioned con-text, I am pleased to learn of Google’s inten-tions to cre-ate its own Price Index and find it reas-sur-ing that we are not paving the Road To Serf-dom. I believe the found-ing fathers would cheer this endeavor as a shin-ing exam-ple of suc-cess of the inno-v-a-tive spirit empow-ered by free enter-prise. Indeed, their orig-i-nal vision for the United States is to cre-ate a soci-ety that rewards cit-i-zens com-men-su-rate with the value they cre-ate. That, in my opin-ion, is the Amer-i-can?Dream.
The longer we allow cer-tain fac-tions of soci-ety to exploit oth-ers or reap rewards greater than the value they cre-ate, the more our lib-eral demo-c-ra-tic sys-tem declines. Our civ-i-liza-tion depends on cit-i-zens trust-ing that their oppor-tu-nity for achieve-ment and suc-cess is equal to their peers and that no injus-tice will under-mine their efforts to cre-ate value for them-selves, their fam-ily and their soci-ety. Fran-cis Fukuyama artic-u-lates this idea with ter-rific lucid-ity in his book, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Cre-ation of Pros-per-ity.
Given that our abil-ity to trust polit-i-cal lead-ers is low, we must rely more than ever on pri-vate enter-prise to lead our soci-ety. Keep in mind that the pri-vate enter-prise is not to blame for Wall Street’s excesses and inor-di-nate com-pen-sa-tion.
Blame the politi-cians, begin-ning with Greenpsan, who paved the way for Wall Street to loot the cap-i-tal mar-kets. In his inter-view with ABC, Larry Sum-mers points out the fact that the finan-cial ser-vices sec-tor (part Wall Street and part cor-po-ra-tions) spends, annu-ally, about $1 million per con-gress-man while employ-ing four lob-by-ists per con-gress-man. That is why Wall Street and cor-po-rate Amer-ica con-tinue to get what they want and are not held account-able for what amounts, in many cases, to rob-bing the invest-ing pub-lic. That’s right – politi-cians and polit-i-cal influ-ence can be bought. All the more rea-son for pri-vate enter-prise to step into the lead-er-ship void and help steer Amer-ica back on?track.
Google is not the only exam-ple of excel-lent lead-er-ship by pri-vate enter-prise. There are many. ?I can-not fail to men-tion my own firm, New Con-structs. Per our mis-sion state-ment, we are ded-i-cated to improv-ing the integrity of the cap-i-tal mar-kets because we believe that is in the best inter-est of the long-term pros-per-ity of our soci-ety. Though not nearly as impact-ful as Mr. Mas-ters, I also spent time in Wash-ing-ton meet-ing with Sen-a-tor Corker, the SEC, the Sen-ate Bank-ing Com-mit-tee, FDIC, Con-gres-sional Over-sight Panel and oth-ers. My presentation focused how to improve the integrity of the capital markets most efficiently. As detailed in my let-ters (#1 and #2) to Sen-a-tor Corker , my pur-pose was to pro-vide our polit-i-cal decision-makers with a pow-er-ful tool to com-bat stock mar-ket manip-u-la-tion.
I sub-mit-ted a list of over 20 Cor-po-rate Finan-cial Dis-clo-sure Trans-gres-sions to the Sen-ate Bank-ing Com-mit-tee. I pointed out that not only were com-pa-nies able to manip-u-late the account-ing sys-tem, but also that vio-la-tion of account-ing was ram-pant and unde-tected. For exam-ple, as detailed in our Cor-po-rate Finan-cial Dis-clo-sure Trans-gres-sions report, over the last five years we found 10 com-pa-nies whose income state-ments do not add up cor-rectly and 20 com-pa-nies in the last 11 years whose bal-ance sheets do not bal-ance. I’d say that is proof that when the cat is away the mice will?play.
Hav-ing worked on Wall Street for sev-eral years, I know how the “sausage is made.”
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