The Brevard Technical Journal

The Bartered Bride

By Ailish M. Nic Phaidin
Brevard Technical Journal

In a speech on October 1, 2002, at the presentation of Awards for Corporate Excellence, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said, "More and more governments are learning the message: democracy, free enterprise, market-based economies. And what is especially important is to make sure that this march of democracy is accompanied by opportunities for businesses around the world, and especially American businesses, to go overseas and to introduce concepts of the free enterprise system in nations around the world. Governments are the ones that help create opportunities, but businesses must turn that opportunity into reality."

I agree wholeheartedly with the discerning Secretary.

Conscientious leaders like Secretary of State Powell are continuing to create opportunities for the corporate sector to successfully enter markets all around the world and to bring with them our democratic and free-enterprise views to far-flung lands.

We've suffered the ignominy of the WorldComs, the Enrons, the Arthur Andersens and the HealthSouths in our courageous endeavors to understand and curb the ballooning corporate malfeasance (a lovely word for blatant corruption) in our midst. Now we are getting daily doses of mutual fund, mortgage brokers, and foreign exchange industries "malfeasance" which, not unlike their predecessors, hit on the small investors and pension fund users to the detriment of us all in the long-term.

In late November 2003, we learned that FBI agents arrested 48 Wall Street foreign exchange brokers after swarming all over the Two World Financial Center (the Merrill Lynch building). Several men were led away to waiting cars. Apparently, the "led away" men all wore suits. At the scene of the swarming, one FBI agent said, "It's currency fraud and securities fraud. It's been a long investigation."

It's the latter part of the FBI agent's statement that truly vexes me. In this age of international terrorism, coupled with our profound loss of life and business acumen on 9/11, I must ask why are we using the scarce and valuable resources of an agency that should be using its talents and energy to root out terrorism while making our nation safer for all our citizens?

Our corporate sector has lost much since 9/11. We have all lost much since 9/11. There is a great need for our government to continue, as it is doing, to create opportunities for us to do business abroad. There is a great need for individual business people to keep their bibs clean and to abide by the letter and spirit of our laws in relation to corporate regulations.

There are not enough Eliot Spitzers or SEC personnel to ensure everyone's compliance with the regulations. No doubt whatever malfeasance may be found from these latest investigations will be proffered as "irregularities" by the corporate sector communications gurus. We have drafted the FBI into this debacle. We must, as business people, ask ourselves a few simple questions, namely:

Are we interested in the long-term safety and well-being of ourselves and our families?
Are we interested in the long-term safety and well-being of our employees?
Are we interested in the long-term safety and well-being of our customers?
Are we interested in the long-term safety and well-being of our neighbors?
Are we interested in the long-term safety and well-being of our nation?
Are we interested in maintaining our ability to develop businesses along legal and ethical lines?
Are we interested in showing an honest and well-deserved profit as the fruit of our labors?
Are we interested in the long-term stability of our nation so that we can continue to make a profit and flourish?

The answers to all these questions (and more) should be a resounding "Yes".

I have profound reservations as to why powerful leaders in our corporate sector, in the full knowledge that the scarce resources of government agencies are being used to ensure that they abide by the laws, appear so unconcerned that these scarce resources are not all being used to protect us in a time of war. The fact that untold resources of the FBI are being used to investigate ourselves, whose singular mad pursuit of mammon is threatening our ability to act as the stalwarts of good business practice and free enterprise is, in my opinion, most certainly making the job of the terrorist all the more lucrative.

Recently Representative Christopher Shays (R Connecticut) said in a statement relating to the Freddie Mac restatement of earnings, "In the face of the latest incarnation of the company's restatement, it's absolutely astonishing that Congress has yet to step in and rein in this financial behemoth. Freddie Mac is the fourth largest financial firm in the country. It obviously can't add or subtract, yet it has the chutzpah to dictate what laws it will comply with, and it continues to tell Congress and the White House what type of regulation is acceptable to it."

Unfortunately, the terrorists can add and subtract. They can also multiply and divide. We do not need division at this time. We need unity and solidarity. We must ask the seeming unified big corporate sector - why are you being divisive?

Maximizing profits is what business is all about, but must that maximization come at the price of our security, well-being, and good name in the global context? Legislation is not the only answer. The corporate sector must recognize that responsibility to its clients; shareholders and the nation are all intricate parts of the mutual and unified citizenship the rest of the nation recognizes.

I am hoping that the happy ending of Smetana's comic opera, The Bartered Bride will see itself replicated in a happy outcome of vigilant and independent Boards of Directors from this recent fiasco. Hopefully, the yes-men-and-women of the past will be ceremoniously bumped off our boards and be replaced with defenders of shareholders' rights. Otherwise, our bride of marital bliss as the global leader of free enterprise will be bartered for a few coins of silver and less security.