(Note to literalists: the Watched column presently contains only a smattering of 'warblogs' because the facilitator of the template-change--Dr. Menlo--is not very familiar with them, and will be adding more as they are sent to him. Also, this blog may contain areas of allusion, satire, subtext, context and possibly even a dash of the surreal: wannabe lit-crits beware.)
Control
[Watch this space for: Pentagon and Petroleum, The Media is only as Liberal as the Corporations Who Own Them, Wash Down With, and Recalcify]
WARBLOGGER WATCH
Wednesday, June 26, 2002
On May 3, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said in response to the Enron scandal, "Capitalism expands wealth primarily through creative destruction -- the process by which the cash flow from obsolescent, low-return capital is invested in high-return, cutting-edge technologies. But for that process to function, markets need reliable data to gauge the return on assets."
These words are haunting as we crash into another bogus-accounting scandal, this time courtesy of WorldCom. "If trust in Corporate America was already broken," reports CNN, "now it's in shambles."
Not good news. But the reaction at National Review Online today has been a fit a nervous giggling. Rod Dreher turns his schadenfreude, not on Arthur Anderson, but on MCI's lousy customer service: "I remember telling my wife that any company that incompetent in dealing with simple billing matters and customer-service requests has serious problems. This morning, quod erat demonstrandum." (Q.E. Duh, more like.) Robert George hopes that the Pledge of Allegiance case will divert the public from this scandal (unaware, perhaps, that invoking God as a diversion while people's pockets are being picked can have disastrous repercussions).
But the howler is supplied by Larry Kudlow ("CEO of Kudlow & Co."), who, in a spectacular show of bad timing, says that consumer confidence in Wall Street should be restored by an attack on Iraq:
"Could it be that a lack of decisive follow-through in the global war on terrorism is the single biggest problem facing the stock market and the nation today? I believe it is.... The shock therapy of decisive war will elevate the stock market by a couple-thousand points."
The Jingo prescription is novel but unconvincing. Maybe we should instead try to get the Lords of Wall Street (and, while we're at it, of Washington) to stop lying to us.
