There is something fundamentally wrong with any individual, institution, corporation or society that places the attainment of vast material wealth at the very top of the psychological food chain.
When reading about people like Bernie Ebbers (Worldcom), John Legere & Gary Winnick (Global Crossing) and Dennis Kozlowski (Tyco); one's left at a complete loss. These folks were already millionaires (in the double digits) before they perpetrated the actions that brought their publicly traded companies down (along with employees, investors and some customers). I can't quite grasp the concept that someone with say 100 million dollars would trash the savings of thousands of modest income families (in order to enrich themselves by yet a few more million).
One doesn't have to do much research to realize that our core infrastructure industries are managed by the ethics of a relatively small number of CEO's and their staffs. Many of the top corporate elite have been practicing a motto of "it's all about me", in the privacy of their boardrooms. If our country is to play a long-term positive role on this little planet, it needs the exact opposite. Enacting laws to govern the conduct of CEO's in all publicly traded companies should be an issue that voters do not drop until it gets done, without loopholes.
With all the war, anger, pollution, overpopulation and poverty on the planet; hopefully the US will use its "temporary" role as the sole super power to the benefit of the planet as a whole (and not to let the greed driven attitudes of some of the business elite dictate or influence that role).

A few quotes while researching for this article:
"It is a paradox of our time that those with power are too comfortable to notice those who suffer, and those who suffer have no power." - source unknown
"Over the past three decades the average annual salary in the US has risen about 10%. Over the same period the average real compensation of the top 100 CEO's has risen from $1.3 million to $37.5 million (1000 times the pay rate of ordinary workers)" - Fortune Mag.
"Managerial capitalism has been replaced with investor capitalism"
R. Khurana Harvard Bus School
"Greed is Good - Greed works - to get the best performance out of executives, align their interests with those of stockholders - and the way to do that is with large grants of stock and stock options. Economists & bus schools legitimized these theories." - Gordon Gekko
"Crime and fear of crime, divert resources away from productive uses: criminals spend their time stealing rather than producing, and potential victims spend time and money trying to protect their property. Executives who devote their time to creating innovative ways to divert shareholder money into their own pockets probably aren't running the real business very well. Investments chosen because they create the illusion of profitability while insiders cash in their stock options are a waste of scarce resources. And if the supply of funds from lenders and investors dries up because of a lack of trust, the economy as a whole suffers". NYT - Paul Krugman
On the Franklin Pierce College website it lists: "Franklin Pierce College will host L. Dennis Kozlowski as its second speaker in the college's Leaders of Conscience Speaker Series on May 1, 2000. In tune with the mission of the college, the Leaders of Conscience Speaker Series hosts exceptional individuals who are representative of the development of intellect and character of which Franklin Pierce College students strive to emulate."
What values have our business schools been teaching for the past 25 yrs
anyways!

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