Andy Grove, the chairman of Intel has a great piece in the Washington Post on reforming corporation in the wake of recent scandals. His solutions would be a lot more effective than the kind of new bureaucracy coming from the Bush Administation and Congress. His suggestions come from someone who knows the corporate world and knows what can prevent more fradulent accounting without cripplling American enterprise.
He also hits on another very good point. While everyone starts knocking corporate leaders as corrupt slimebags, what is needed to lift the American economy out of its doldrums aren’t recriminations and threats, but the kind of visionary leadership and economic uplift that only free enterprise can provide. Yes, there are some CEOs that deserve to be sent to a nice federal prison room for their crimes, but there are a lot of CEOs who deserve credit for helping lay the groundwork for economic recovery. Let’s just hope our desire to punish CEOs doesn’t turn into a witch hunt that will hurt the inevitable economic rebound.
