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Account Balance
Can the government really ensure "corporate accountability"?
Tim Cavanaugh

But at the corporate level, there is more than accountability. There is a robust form of rough justice for misbehaving companies. Corporations already receive the "death penalty" with no law enforcement needed. Villains of recent years -- including Enron, Tyco, ImClone, Global Crossing, and even venerable Arthur Andersen -- are all finished or at death's door. WorldCom, renamed "MCI" in an unsuccessful bid to escape the stench of its past, is struggling in a harsh telecom market. Even Union Carbide, a legendary corporate knave, no longer exists; the company was absorbed two years ago by Dow Chemical, which itself is now targeted by anti-Carbide activists.

Do I believe Union Carbide paid a steep enough price for the 8,000 people who died due to the company's negligence in Bhopal, India? I do not. But at least the company isn't around anymore. If only the same could be said for misbehaving agencies of the state -- the same state that activists would charge with enforcing accountability on private corporations....

...If that's not enough, put this in your Superfund site and dispose of it: The federal government is by far the largest environmental polluter in the country, out-dumping any private company.

If any private corporation had engaged in such patterns of malfeasance, fraud, and megabuck sleight of hand, it would have been punished by its customers, shareholders and employees long before the government got involved. This doesn't mean the market is a perfect or even reliable mechanism for regulating bad behavior. But it does suggest that before we give the job of promoting organizational accountability to the least accountable organization of all, we might remember the line about the fox and the henhouse.