article

["John H.St.John" <homer@abac.com>]

Accountants Rule the World
by John H. St.John


Don Bauder, financial columnist for the San Diego Tribune, in his column for
May 30, writes under a headline: ‘Chainsaw Al’ cited as example of corporate
compensation run amok: One axes employees, the other ignores them. Both get
obscenely rich in the process. And both of these chief executives are
egregious examples of corporate compensation run amok, says Graef Crystal,
San Diego based publisher of The Crystal Report, a publication that probes
executive compensation policies. The two executives are Albert J. “Chainsaw
Al” Dunlap, chief executive of Florida-based Sunbeam, and Charles B. Wang of
Long Island based Computer Associates.

If these were isolated cases, and if these accountants limited themselves to
the simple theft of company assets, it would be bad enough; but the reality
is that decisions affecting the lives of everyone on the planet earth are
being made by corporation CEOs.  The sails of these mindless bookeepers are
driven by the winds of investors in common-stock. Heedless of everything but
the bottom line; these Ahabs must eventually run the ship of state on the
rocks. Indeed their mindless captaincy and their first-mates, the vassal
politicians, are preparing the death of the planet. 

The threat of nuclear war between Pakistan and India can be laid at the feet
of the stock market and their CEOs. How can the US hypocritically protest
when the giant nuclear industry continues to upgrade the thousands of bombs
that we have, and still has no solution to the nuclear waste problem
generated by atomic energy? Why such madness? Ask Chainsaw Al -- he
understands. 

The decision to downsize and ruin a company in order to gain stock market
profits on a merger is obviously treason to employees and consumers, but
when you consider that the traitors use their power to control our
government, corrupt our educational institutions, downsize public health,
poison the world with radioactivity and other toxins, and control the
production of the food we eat, it is time that we put an end to a system
that puts accountants in charge. 

It is time to put an end to the sale of common-stock. It is time to return
ownership to the corporations by making them employee owned cooperatives. It
is time to return the bookeepers to their profit and loss statements.
Living under a mad Nero or Caligula must have been bad, but with our future
in the hands of Chain Saw Al and his like; it is time we woke up.


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