Corporate Crooks: How Rogue Executives Ripped Off Americans-- and Congress Helped Them Do It!How did the most trusted financial system in the world become the breeding ground for the massive corruption uncovered in the Enron and Worldcom scandals? The simple answer is greed. Greed so blinded CEO's, auditors, and even members of Congress that they allowed a gang of rogue executives to rig the game and cheat investors out of $200 billion, wiping out the life savings of many unsuspecting Americans.In Corporate Crooks, veteran USA Today investigative journalist Greg Farrell explains how this breakdown happened. The book shows how incentive compensation for CEOs, combined with the decline of the American auditing industry, led to a series of spectacular accounting frauds, not just at Enron and WorldCom, but at other companies as well.Farrell details how a series of seemingly minor Congressional actions-from a law penalizing corporations for paying salaries in excess of $1 million to a Senate vote to scuttle a rule calling for the expensing of stock options-created the conditions that led to the accounting abuses that eventually brought gigantic corporations down.Written in a straightforward, explanatory style, Corporate Crooks allows the average investor to understand the root causes of the biggest accounting frauds of the past five years. But understanding how these frauds took place isn't enough. Farrell also arms readers with the knowledge they'll need to judge whether the next fantastic, fast-growing company of the new economy is a genuine business success or another Enron waiting to implode. |
Contents
Foreword | 13 |
Chapter One Executive Compensation | 27 |
13 | 37 |
Copyright | |
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92nd Street Y accounting firms accounting fraud Arthur Andersen AT&T Attorney auditing firms auditors Bacanovic bank bankers Bernie Ebbers Blodget board of directors boss Brabbs brokerage firms cash charges Chewco chief financial officer Citibank clients company's Congress consulting corporate criminal defense earnings statements Eliot Spitzer employees energy federal firm's former fraud at Enron funds growth Grubman HealthSouth ImClone ImClone stock ImClone's indictment Internet investment investors Jack Grubman Jeff Skilling jurors jury Ken Lay Kozlowski and Swartz lawyers Levitt line cost loans managers Manhattan Merrill Lynch million months numbers Owens paid partners partnerships profits prosecutors public companies quarter revenues Richard Scrushy rules salary Sam Waksal Scannell Scrushy's SEC's securities fraud sell shareholders Sherron Watkins Spitzer Stewart stock market stock options stock price telecommunications tion told top executives trading trial Tyco Tyco's USA Today Waksal Wall Street wanted Weill WorldCom York