Todd Andrew Barnett
Todd Andrew Barnett is a Libertarian Party activist as well as a devout libertarian Wiccan. His web site is located at www.toddandrewbarnett.com.
The Evils of Enron
There’s something about the Enron affair that really bothers me. I’m not talking specifically about the reports in the press and the TV media, although they continue to refuse to acknowledge that the government’s incessant intrusion into the marketplace has made matters worse than they need to be. No, I’m talking about the socialists within the Democratic Party, the media, and everywhere else in our culture who claim that the ongoing corruption and irresponsibility that lie within politically-sweetened corporations like Enron ought to be stopped ... by tacking on more regulations, more rules, and more eavesdropping from Uncle Sam, and by enhancing the long-entrenched partnership between government and large corporations.
There’s no question that Enron and Big Brother have, throughout the 1990s, been deeply entangled with each other. After all, conglomerates like the failed energy giant have tons of corporate attorneys, lobbyists, and special interest groups working on their behalf. No one can possibly deny that no such relationships have long been forged between the two entities. Yet media personalities from 2000 Green Party Presidential candidate Ralph Nader to hard-nosed leftist Julianne Malveaux to populist Bill O’Reilly of The O’Reilly Factor are calling for more destructive entanglements between business and government, claiming that more regulations and more intervention are required to keep the marketplace in check. As usual, our society and pop culture want to label the free market as the personification of evil.
In other words, the “irresponsible, reckless, evil free marketplace” is merely operating on the principle of self-interest, but government intervention and regulation merely operate on the principle of “the public good.” No matter how you look at it, government is “good,” whereas the private sector is “bad.” Another round of populist screenwriting by the statists once again depicts the “noble, heroic” actions of Big Brother defending the “poor, unfairly disadvantaged consumer and worker” against the “evil” private sector.
And because of the “evil” private sector -- an image that has been and will always be unfairly painted by the media, liberal pundits, and politicians in Congress -- publicly-traded corporations must be subject to federal audits, all because of Enron’s dubious accounting practices.
But the question is not so much whether or not the government should regulate big corporations or audit them. It is also not a question of whether or not there is a lack of government dictates or regulations. It is a question of whether or not there should be a deep, close relationship between government and business, and whether or not that close relationship is what caused the problems in the first place.
Let’s examine Enron closely. I can easily tell you that Enron was the by-product of years of intimate federal intertwining between the company and Uncle Sam. During the eight years of the Clinton Administration, a deal was reached between Enron and its power plant in India, thanks to Clinton’s “help.” But make no mistake ... Clinton only “helped” Enron by using corporate subsidies -- in the form of taxpayer money -- through the not-so-touted Export-Import Bank (a program which purports to shell out generous subsidies to bail out ailing nations and their troubled economies, but actually provides a taxpayer-paid cash-cow machine to politically-connected corporations). Of course Enron was not only a big beneficiary of that program, but also the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), which operates on a similar level.
The other thing I can tell you is that Enron was shielded from many of the regulations that have been imposed on corporations for many years. In fact, since it used campaign donations to influence their benefactors, they, in return, received a great deal of support and protection from outside competition. For the longest time, Enron’s hands were soaked with government blood, proving once and for all that government regulations have never prevented the company from engaging in any illegal activity.
SEC regulations, which can be examined at the agency’s website, have never been questioned by the public. And the public has never questioned the bureaucrats in charge. Unfortunately, the public seems to think that the regulators are saints whereas capitalists are tyrants. But the regulations, which were designed from the very start to prevent that kind of corruption, have never averted that sort of problem in the first place. In fact, they've fostered more problems by preventing corporate raiders -- who are in the business of taking over troubled companies through a market process known as “hostile takeover” -- from acquiring the company and ridding it of corrupt, sleazy managers who have no respect for their consumers and employee base. If Enron had done that, its problems would have been averted and it would not have had a hard $618 million loss on its bleeding hands.
While I had thumbed through the news channels duking it out about the disaster and the articles on MSNBC about the Enron mess, I couldn’t help but notice the latest report on Arthur Andersen, the auditing firm which had its share of getting in neck deep with Enron’s accounting woes. The report had a lot to do with the firm on the verge of copping a plea of guilty for shredding its accounting documents. The Justice Department will surely go after them for it.
But even if they do, the free market will remain over-regulated. One thing is for sure: it’s gonna get worse before it all gets better..
