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To: James Strauss who wrote (11528)	8/25/2002 2:49:35 PM
From: j g cordes	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13094

Re ".. Let's hope that we've seen the end of the era of cooked books..." I doubt it. The real problem is a bifurcated corporate upper crust culture that's getting more schizophrenic, greedy, and devious over time. In the last ten years the average difference in pay between CEO's and employees has gone from 1:10 to 1:100. Note that CEO's are employees also, yet they've been on an elitist greed binge that would make Karl Marx wince! Heck, Adam Smith would have thought he was watching the resurection of the feudal system! There is such a thing as leadership. Its real. The troops mimic what their leaders do, investors mimic what corporate leadership does. The blatent grabbing of money, privilege and dishonest reporting of management CAUSED the bubble... millions of investors followed their lead. Did Gerstner for example, ever announce he was taking 300 million in stock on top of 12 million in salary? More important, and this is a general comment, did he or other top leaders deserve hundreds of millions? Leadership by example.... Its very popular to blame the common investor for the 90's bubble, but they were taking their cue from management practices. Corporate leadership doubled, then doubled again, and doubled again their salaries and bonuses, additionally granting themselves stock option pay packages that required inflated results. So what's the residue of this look like? We have a new reporting certification for CEO's of the top 1000 companies. As if this should have been necessary to verify that what we assume to be true is actually true.. the absurdity of it is amazing! The incentives for and the culture of greed is still with us. Leadership continues to demonstrate that the only true virtue is using power to get rich. Until there's a significant change of the goals and enrichment practices at the top I see little to support long term trust.. we'll continue to play the market betting on the prowess of thieves and story tellers. Overstatement.. yes, but true.