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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jjkirk who wrote (3060)	7/23/2002 6:26:57 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Ease their pain Editorial The Philadelphia Inquirer Posted on Tue, Jul. 23, 2002 To take some jitters out of the market, Bush should back Senate reform bill. In the wake of the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history, it was supposed to be reassuring to hear tough talk from the White House's top economic official - that would be President Bush. "I'm not a stockbroker or a stockpicker but I do believe the fundamentals for economic growth are for real," Mr. Bush said yesterday. Problem solved - even with the Sunday bankruptcy of telecommunications giant WorldCom Inc., and all the likely fallout. Right? Well, blue chip stocks did stage an afternoon comeback, amid ups and downs for the New York markets. But jittery investors who fueled a stocks slide heading into the weekend were still popping antacids. To the extent Wall Street is looking to Washington for help in calming those investors, it appears the capital markets haven't yet seen it. Some finance experts have concluded there is no Bush administration spokesman for the economy, what with the wisecracking utterances of Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill often regarded as loose-cannon law. But they're not entirely correct, of course: There's the President himself. It's too bad, then, that President Bush refuses to throw his weight behind meaningful corporate accounting overhaul. That would be the Senate-approved measure, as opposed to the House's reform-lite. And Mr. Bush needs to back the more robust reform. Yet to hear the President discuss congressional negotiations over the bill, you'd think the overhaul was going to be delivered by the stork. "Congress is going to get a bill that will help to take some of the uncertainty out of the market," he said. Get a bill? They've got one, and it was approved 97-0 by the Senate. If the President gets behind it - instead of being so determinedly vague - the overhaul stands a chance. This President has his own corporate track record to answer for, and that of top aides. So he should do all he can to distance his administration from today's deceptive accounting and cozy deals for CEOs and the like. Post Enron and WorldCom, why would any policymaker pussyfoot about the need for change? Reform must include: independent oversight of corporate numbers crunchers, conflict-of-interest rules so auditors don't become chummy with boardroom execs, and tougher penalties for financial fiddling. Those reforms will work in tandem with the chastening effect of the market itself. By one measure, the market lost $7 trillion since late March. That figure and the pile of corporate corpses are bound to sober would-be book-cookers - a potent self-correction that should help restore investors' confidence. For those who don't wise up, there's the cautionary tale of the WorldCom failure. Following its outrageous, $4-billion profit fudge, creditors may well insist on a management housecleaning. If so, good riddance. As for whether these issues should galvanize the Bush administration to action, consider this: That $7 trillion out of mostly American pockets is a lot more than the Bush tax cuts put in. philly.com ___________________ btw, I'm TOTALLY in favor of holding folks from both parties accountable for their actions...we should NOT let Rubin off the hook but we deserve to know more about Bush and Cheney's business dealings -- why won't they just put all the cards out on the table...??