NEW YORK (RNS) Reading the business section lately is like sitting in an alcoholic intervention. As people describe wound after wound, abuse after abuse, the alcoholic says he is fine and huffs out the door for another drink.
The difference is that, instead of heading straight for the tavern, many business leaders first visit their favorite congressmen for special favors. Now addiction is setting national policy.
We know about bankers: their high-risk mortgage practices drove the nation into a recession, several large firms out of business, and major banks to the federal bailout window.
Crisis averted, they immediately resumed their addictive behavior, setting up another debt crisis and another housing crisis, all while pumping up executive compensation.
Bartender! Another round, please.
Was anyone surprised to learn last week that JPMorgan Chase’s top officers knew about Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme but did nothing to protect their own customers?
It doesn’t stop there. Pharmacy giant CVS is being pressed to stop anticompetitive practices. Brash, bubble-style spending is back in vogue at Google. Venture capital is flooding toward half-baked ideas, as if nothing was learned from the dot-com bust.
The insider-trading trial of Galleon Group’s former leader, Raj Rajaratnam, has revealed a pattern of abuse at the hedge fund, most recently a questionable $25 million investment favoring a former employee just before he testified at Rajaratnam’s trial.
The next day, we learned that three online gambling sites are facing charges of fraud and money laundering, Google is being accused of blocking South Korean services, and people who lost big on private residence clubs for the wealthy are rolling those dice again.
Business-friendly congressional leaders — Wall Street’s “drinking buddies,” in alcoholic parlance — are happy to tipple with business leaders, because they, too, are ordering another round of the same supply-side spirits that failed before, chased down by the same serve-the-rich tax policies that sank the federal budget.
Wiser heads have tried to reason with this addictive crowd, only to learn that addicts are impervious to reason and statistics; they feel too special for normal restraints, and they will do anything to keep their drug of choice flowing.
In an addictive family, some try to get healthy, maybe even leaving home — but there is no moving on from this top-echelon crowd. They control the money and some of highest-paying jobs. Trying to unwind the interlocking addictions of financiers, short-horizon executives and their political cronies runs into a swamp of co-dependency.
So we can expect more corporate mergers that accomplish nothing except layoffs and high banking fees. More reductions in research and development, more short-term sales of assets, more quarter-to-quarter managing, more off-shoring of jobs, more price hikes and quality cuts, another tech bubble and another housing bubble.
You look at drunks catering to drunks while others suffer and you say, “This is crazy.” And, yes, it is crazy. It is the craziness that alcoholic families endure, where mom and dad have stopped functioning, kids feel abandoned, every day is another nightmare, and soon the crash comes.
In the corporate world, it is time for outside boards of directors to step up and earn their fees. In politics, it is time to stop bargaining and start enforcing accountability. In our communities, it is time to stop putting executives on a pedestal and to ask instead, “Are you sober? Otherwise, no car keys for you.”
(Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus” and founder of the Church Wellness Project. His website is http://www.morningwalkmedia.com. Follow Tom on Twitter (at)tomehrich.)
