Y
ou have to love the Richmond Times-Disgrace, err, Dispatch.
It is a perpetual fount of cheer leading for the ruling elite with no regard for average folks. Its news sections take down, stenographic-style, the opinions of corporate pooh -bahs while their Sunday editorial pages are dominated by self-dealing lobbyists or non-profit bureaucrats telling us what a great job they are doing or TD publisher Tom Silvestri tapping out another bizarre tome about how busy and interesting and what a leader he is.
In recent weeks, we had John A. Luke, head of paper-maker MeadWestvaco which relocated its HQ to Richmond a few years ago, tell us that government regulation is bad, bad bad. Luke, who avoids real interviews with journalists, didn’t bother to provide much detail at a country club speech other than mentioning President Barack Obama’s stimulus program and plans for a federal agency to protect consumers.
Before, we had Bruce Whitehurst, head of the Virginia Bankers Association, complain that banking reform sought by Democrats such as Chris Dodd and Barney Frank comes with harmful new rules, chief among them an agency that would (gasp) actually protect consumers consumers from the predatory practices of banks.
One wonders where Mr. Whitehurst was when Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, American International Group, Wachovia, Washington Mutual and many others either went down or had to find someone to buy them because of their incredibly bad choices in the subprime mortgage mess and other areas. Who got screwed here? The consumers, that’s who. They suffer 9.9 percent unemployment while the suits in C-Suites got gigantic golden parachutes not to mention a $700 billion plus federal bailout.
Now comes the latest on the front pages of today’s Wall Street Journal. There is a fascinating front-page story that the federal Minerals Management Service, which may or may not be tasked with overseeing offshore oil rigs, has regularly conceded safety oversight to the drilling industry.
Gov. Bob McDonnell and his group who want Deepwater Horizon rigs offshore of Virginia say that the industry is already well-regulated. The WSJ seems to beg to differ. MMS seems to follow a policy popular in the George W. Bush administration that federal regulators will step back and let the real experts — oil companies and their lobbyists — write the rules. No need to mention the result — millions of gallons of crude oil still pumping unhindered into the Gulf of Mexico in one of the worst environmental disasters in decades. And, compared to other countries with large offshore petroleum reserves, the U.S. is seen as a regulatory slouch.
I remember during the Bush administration covering the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission. I did so when Christopher Cox, an amiable former California congressman and fan of free market maven Ayn Rand, was in charge. His mission was to lighten up on the Sarbanes-Oxley law that toughened up accounting after the 1990s Enron and WorldCom scandals.
At the time, the John Lukes of the Corporate World were moaning big-time about Sarbox. Cox helped soften implementing it, which actually was effective and resulted in far-fewer forced restatements of company earnings. But the general feeling was light-touch regulation and letting the industry write the rules.
Cox somehow was hard to find when the you know what hit the fan in 2008. As for the shareholders he was worn to protect, well, they lost trillions.
Peter Galuszka
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