The Blame Bill Clinton Crowd

by Molly Ivins

We are sitting here looking at a huge mess in corporate governance, and before anyone can even get out a useful suggestion, some Republican leaps up and says, "It's all Bill Clinton's fault."

Thank you for that eternally helpful observation, but some of us would very much like to just get on with fixing things. As it happens, Bill Clinton did not appoint Harvey Pitt chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, a position from whence Pitt has achieved the almost-unimaginable distinction of getting himself criticized by The Wall Street Journal for being too close to business. Instead, Clinton appointed Arthur Levitt chairman of the SEC, and everyone from Wall Street to Main Street is now wandering around muttering, "If we'd've just listened to Arthur Levitt, we wouldn't be in this trouble." Levitt's strenuous efforts to save the system from itself were blocked by the business lobby.

It is not Bill Clinton's fault that George Bush's business career reeks. From Arbusto to Spectrum 7 to Harken Energy to the baseball deal, all of it smells -- and the efforts to perfume it with spin are embarrassing. Will someone inform Ari Fleischer that after Bush unloaded his Harken stock at $4 a share, the price promptly slid to $1.25. Perhaps this will prevent more misleading statements.

Nor is the late filing on the insider stock sale the problem at Harken. See if you can follow this bouncing ball: In 1989, Harken masked it losses when it sold 80 percent of a subsidiary, Aloha Petroleum, to a partnership of Harken insiders called International Marketing & Resources for $12 million. Of that sum, $11 million came from a note held by Harken. In January 1990, IMR in turn sold its stake in Aloha to a privately held company called Advance Petroleum Marketing, and the Harken loan was effectively transferred to Advance. In other words, they borrowed money from their own company to buy a subsidiary at an inflated price, thus covering up the company's losses. The SEC later ruled the transaction fake and forced the company to restate its earnings.

Now, the reason all this is of more than academic interest is because Bush is about to recreate himself as a corporate reformer. Aside from the happy hilarity of the event, what can we expect? A Nixon-goes-to-China moment is always possible, but highly unlikely. Look for the waffle, the shuffle and the Texas sidestep.

The business press thinks he will endorse criminal penalties for executives who certify false financial statements. BUT listen carefully to see if he endorses criminal penalties for executives who issue financial statements that are misleading, not necessarily false. Big loophole there.

Another key reform he's likely to dodge is banning auditors from consulting for their accounting clients. That one is really basic and necessary. Another critical reform apt to be among the missing is limiting the use of stock options by requiring that their cost be deducted from earnings. And one last essential reform to prevent the problem that caused stock analysts to recommend stocks they considered "dogs" and "junk" to their customers: sever investment bankers and analysts.

Bush is far more likely to go the "few bad apples" route, huff and puff and urge punishing the evildoers, without recognizing that the whole system needs to be fixed. It's the systemic changes we should look for -- a whole lot of righteous indignation aimed at evildoers fixes nothing.

Perhaps I am too cynical, but I believe there is a separate class of people in this country called Too Rich to Go to Prison. With the peerless John Ashcroft at the helm of the Justice Department, I don't think any of the now-infamous CEOs need to lose sleep over the prospect. It's not exactly like Bobby Kennedy going after Jimmy Hoffa.

On the other hand, the only A.G. we've got did instigate a 13-month-long undercover investigation that resulted in the arrest of 12 prostitutes in New Orleans. Amazing -- they found 12 whores in New Orleans. Surely Osama bin Laden is next.

Meanwhile, Sen. Paul Sarbanes' accounting reform bill, the one with teeth in it, is due to hit the Senate floor this week, and Majority Leader Tom Daschle should get about 80 votes for it. In other words, the politicians are spooked. The House Republican "reform" bill is a weak joke (now there's a line that's evergreen). But the good news is even Republicans don't want to appear to be defending business.

At least some of them don't. Rep. Roy D. Blunt (R-Missouri), their chief deputy whip, said, "Legislation is the worst thing you can do to solve this problem." That should probably be engraved in marble somewhere.