Worthy as those issues may be, they don't have the potential to "move the needle" (as they say in the PR biz) of US public opinion that does this particular scandal, which hits the American middle class in the spot closest to its heart, the wallet.
Strenuous efforts are being made to spin the Enron saga into merely another chapter of Americans' everlasting (but never worrisome) "love-hate relationship with the corporate world," as the Economist (http://www.economist.co.uk/world/na/displayStory.cfm?story_id=987984)puts it. But there are reasons to believe Americans' enmity toward corporate execs could reach a higher degree than ever before.
In the article just cited, the Economist can barely stifle a yawn in pointing out how ambivalent Americans have been re business throughout history. The article concludes with these anodyne words:
"The Enron affair, though it raises many questions, is not arousing fury because Americans are turning against business; it is doing so because so many Americans have put money into the stockmarket. A businesslike people cannot afford to see lax rules and unscrupulous chancers undermine the health of the entire system. America loathes Mr Lay because it treasures the notion that business should do the country good."
But in trying to soothe there, the Economist actually highlights a key vulnerability of American capitalism as we enter this particular businessmen-are-bums cycle: a record percentage of Americans are now invested in stocks and -- with the demise of "real" (i.e., defined-benefit) pensions plans -- they are now utterly at the mercy of the stock market in terms of retirement security. In short, there is at least a chance that Americans are scared enough to insist on *real* changes in the system that capitalists could have trouble accommodating.
Carl
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