Wednesday, December 17, 2003
Back on Planet Earth
Yes, we can dream, can't we?
Still, I was snatched from the farmer's delightful reverie by memories of a book I just finished reading, The Informant, by Kurt Eichenwald. A riveting, nearly incredible story of the Archer Daniels Midland price fixing case of the early 90s and the government witness at its center who secretly taped nearly everything, the book is also a window on what really goes on in the back rooms of the world's most powerful corporations. It should be required reading of anyone claiming to know how corporate execs really talk and act. If Hollywood created characters who talked like Dwayne Andreas' son, Mick, or his counterparts at Ajinomoto and other multinational co-conspirators, wingnuts everywhere would sneer at the crude Marxist dialog ("...ADM's motto: Our competitors are our friends, and our customers are our enemies") and the general uninformed hostility it revealed towards the benevolent stewards of the world economy. As one DOJ lawyer puts it, the ADM tapes will be shown in every first-year law school antitrust class for at least a generation. If only The Smoking Gun would post them for the rest of the world to see.
Anyway, despite the relatively successful, if clumsy prosecution of the case by the Clinton Administration, Eichenwald can't help but observe:
And that was before the "era of personal responsibility." Something tells me Ken Lay isn't sweating too hard.
Still, I was snatched from the farmer's delightful reverie by memories of a book I just finished reading, The Informant, by Kurt Eichenwald. A riveting, nearly incredible story of the Archer Daniels Midland price fixing case of the early 90s and the government witness at its center who secretly taped nearly everything, the book is also a window on what really goes on in the back rooms of the world's most powerful corporations. It should be required reading of anyone claiming to know how corporate execs really talk and act. If Hollywood created characters who talked like Dwayne Andreas' son, Mick, or his counterparts at Ajinomoto and other multinational co-conspirators, wingnuts everywhere would sneer at the crude Marxist dialog ("...ADM's motto: Our competitors are our friends, and our customers are our enemies") and the general uninformed hostility it revealed towards the benevolent stewards of the world economy. As one DOJ lawyer puts it, the ADM tapes will be shown in every first-year law school antitrust class for at least a generation. If only The Smoking Gun would post them for the rest of the world to see.
Anyway, despite the relatively successful, if clumsy prosecution of the case by the Clinton Administration, Eichenwald can't help but observe:
Eventually about thirty different grand juies investigated price-fixing in almost every corner of the food and beverage industry; by 1999, the government had obtained more than $1 billion in fines. In the wake of Harvest King, it has become apparent that price-fixing was a workaday endeavor around the globe, involving scores of corporations and executives.
And yet.
The only person to step forward and reveal these crimes--despite his bizarre reasons for doing so--was Mark Whiteacre. It took someone as deeply troubled as he--a man so reckless he would steal millions of dollars while working for the FBI--to tip the first domino in what has emerged as a multibillion-dollar criminal enterprise.
And that was before the "era of personal responsibility." Something tells me Ken Lay isn't sweating too hard.
