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Non-Tech : Auric Goldfinger's Short List -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: StockDung who wrote (11248)	3/23/2003 10:19:26 AM
From: afrayem onigwecher	Respond to of 19428

REMEMBER THAT GREAT SLOGAN "with a name like Smucker's, it has to be good"? Well, it came to mind while we were perusing the latest incredible poop on the nation's largest chain of rehabilitation hospitals, HealthSouth. It seems to us that with a name like Scrushy, you have to be honest. Yet the SEC has charged that under Mr. Scrushy's stewardship (he also founded the company), HealthSouth indulged in the most brazen and breathtakingly thorough accounting fraud. Seemingly, ever since it was in its swaddling clothes -- the company was launched 20 years ago and went public a few years later -- it has been primarily in the business of diddling investors. What we find most engaging is that Mr. Scrushy allegedly eschewed all those fancy schemes that Wall Street dreamed up for Enron and WorldCom and that ilk in favor of plain vanilla fraud: When he needed earnings to meet analysts' projections, he simply ordered his hirelings to make them up. Our kind of straightforward guy. Since '99 alone, so claims the SEC, he thus conjured up out of thin air $1.4 billion in earnings and $800 million in assets. All of us who feared that the well of juicy corporate scandal was running dry can breathe easily, thanks to Mr. Scrushy. We also want to assure you, if you had any doubts, that Wall Street and Corporate America are not the only places that attract the ethically challenged. On that score, Washington is easily their equal. Witness one Richard Perle, chairman of the Defense Policy Board, an unpaid post but one that nonetheless offers great rewards in influence. Mr. Perle is notably buddy-buddy with Donald Rumsfeld and lesser but still-powerful luminaries in and around the Pentagon. According to a neat story in Friday's New York Times, Mr. Perle has been hired by Global Crosssing, that model of probity and purity (think Gary Winnick), to help persuade the Defense Department to ease its objections to the proposed sale of the company to foreigners. If the deal goes through, he stands to rake in $725,000. Mr. Perle insists he's not doing anything unethical. They always say that. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- E-mail comments to editors@barrons.com