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Enron, Enron, Enron — front page and center, top of the network television news and the biggest criminally-derived bankruptcy in U.S. history. A “gargantuan pyramid scheme,” says Republican Senator Peter G. Fitzgerald. Proposals for reform are gushing forth from Congressional minds of varying sincerities. Tougher regulations to protect investors, pensionholders from crooked self-dealing corporate executives…

For years I have wondered why religious sermons in places of worship focus so exclusively on excoriating individual sin while avoiding corporate sin in the business world. Well, those days of avoidance are being replaced with increasing attention to the gigantic, multi-directional Enron crimes and abuses against so many innocent people. “The behavior of Enron…

The integrity of institutions of higher education has long been under assault by the growing collaboration between corporations and academia, particularly in the areas of scientific and technological research. More than two decades ago, David F. Noble, a historian who now teaches at York University in Toronto,warned in an article in the Nation that corporations,…

Two leaders – one the Secretary of Defense and the other the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce – need to put their fortitude behind their recent acknowledgments of major problems in their domains. Donald Rumsfeld, who was a class ahead of me at Princeton and vibrating with energy even then, has been reported…

Congress and the national media are feigning great shock and dismay over the revelations of accounting shenanigans in the collapse of Enron, the giant Texas-based energy corporation. But, the truth is that the Congress and the financial media have long been aware of the accounting profession’s shortcomings and its predilection to paint a rosy picture…

Premiums for health care in the United States are expected to increase by 15% this year – a staggering sum, adding tens of billions more dollars to the trillion dollar plus of year 2001. The industry is rife with waste, duplication, mistakes, billing fraud, and malpractice. Countless studies have documented these patterns from the General…

Last fall, the lobbyists for the insurance industry were swarming across Capitol Hill warning of dire consequences if Congress failed to enact federal assistance and guarantees to protect insurance companies from future losses from terrorist attacks. In a transparent effort to stampede the legislators, the companies’ warned that credit for new construction would dry up…

The Federal Reserve wields enormous power over the national economy. Its decisions have a major impact on every citizen. Jobs, shelter and the quality of life are greatly affected by what the Federal Reserve decides on monetary policy. Yet, the Federal Reserve is allowed to make its decisions in secret. The transcripts and minutes of…

It is a long distance from college and university campus stores in the U.S. and the wretched overseas factories indenturing sweatshop labor who produce products that find their way to student consumers. But the United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) has built a network of students across our country to bridge that distance with organized consumer…

Gene Kimmelman of Consumers Union has been following the telephone industry for many years before and after the notorious de-regulatory Telecommunications Act of 1996. This Act was supposed to increase quality competition, benefitting consumers, between local, long distance and cable operators. Here is Kimmelman’s short-hand evaluation of the result of the Act on your pocketbook…