I enjoyed the article and I think it points out some of the flaws that modern corporate governance has, even with some high profile convictions.

But a lot of this seems, frankly, OBVIOUS. There is little incentive not to commit crime when you are an executive. And the problem is not the executives, but that the crimes committed have little penalties, and would willing be committed by someone else. In economic terms, there is too much opportunity cost (read: money), to not commit a crime that is at best lightly punished.

I don't want to condone any behavior, but regardless, you cannot expect much out of people who have gained their positions with a combination of intelligence and greed.

I'm not usually one for slamming on articles on the web but this one is really horrible.

First off, he blew credibility with me by introducing the term "sarbox". I thought, maybe my company is the oddball, but it's SOX to us and to our consultants. I was involved in the SOX process, never heard the term "sarbox" before this article.

A little research on Google. There are about 124,000 articles with the terms "Sarbanes-Oxley" and "sarbox" but not "sox". There are 1.8 million with "Sarbanes-Oxley" and "SOX" but not "sarbox". So my perception is correct, SOX is by far the preferred term in the real world.

Kind of trivial, but like I said, it blows his credibility as having actually talked to any business people about it.

Then - who on earth thought that SOX was going to bring an era of enlightened business people who only seek to serve? People at those levels are power hungry greed-heads. That's how they got there, that's never going to change. A good law is one that changes would-be crooks behaviour. Change their attitudes? Keep wishing.

So later in the article when he mentions that Eagletech was actually caught because they didn't fulfill their SOX requirements, I would call that a success of the legislation. One bad guy who didn't manage to weasel past loopholes in the legislation.

As far as the excuse mentality, again, what did you really expect? Of course they're going to blame others, of course some news media will report the excuses and take it seriously, and some people will believe it.

SOX has added layers of bureaucracy to my company, making it hard for an IT guy to get his job done sometimes. I question its value on those grounds. But this article provides no argument against its effectiveness, and only evidence for its success in the case of Eagletech.

Of course, Enron changed nothing. The criminals will merely change the name of their criminal enterprise and move on.

Remember, Enron represents the acme, the absolute high point, of the merger between Republican Businesses and Organized Crime.

The point of Enron, it's "Business Purpose" was NEVER to sell a decent product at a decent price; no - Enron's business model was founded on a con and the only goal was to steal money, especially from the poor and defenceless.

This kind of con is the basis for the entire GOP "New Economy" project - Enron is esentially the largest mafia-style "Bust Out' ever perpetrated. And rest assured, the real players, the con artists behind the curtain, are already setting up the next con.

It isn't as if the Enron crowd has invented the it's not us it's them excuse, such as: Vietnam could have been won if the liberal media hadn't sapped Americans' support for the war; the media's reporting on the secret or unwarranted spying programs or secret detention centres is giving aid to the terrorists; all the bad news reporting out of Iraq is providing a false picture of the progress being made there.

Successful people by nature have great confidence in their abilities and don't allow obstacles to get in their way. It is results that often define how history judges. Whatever faults and failures he had, Churchill's place in history if assured.

Johnson, Nixon and GWB won't be so lucky.

Perhaps greatness is the abilty to know exactly where the line and how close you can come to it without going over. Some successful CEO's manage it well. Lay and Skilling didn't and will pay the price.

Having been a management consultant for sixteen years, and working with executives most of the past ten, I have seen the occasional person I wouldn't trust, but I have to say that the vast majority of people I work with are hardworking and honest. In fact, we've empirical cause to believe that outstanding leaders demonstrate both integrity and the ability to take responsibility for the performance of their organizations.

I would heartily agree that there are poor leaders, who want to blame "them," and I also agree that SarBox is an attempt to legislate morality that is bound to have problems, but the article might have been more convincing, or at least less annoying to me, had Mr. Weiss not chosen to tar all of corporate America with the same brush of unadulterated evil. So far as I can see, not all of Corporate America is required to belong to the Church of Satan, or even the Church of Mammon.

Oh yeah, the Fortune 500 corporation that I work for changed their tune fast after the Enron indictments. They immediately created a new executive media position--Director of Corporate Compliance--and also a series of online tutorials for the people at the bottom to take on how not to be a corporate thief. Enron was directly mentioned in the first tutorial I was made to take and sign off on, in which a hapless mail clerk named Steve helps a paper company get a supply contract by taking home a free box of office products and in so doing, nearly brings down the whole place due to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the post-Enron climate. Luckily, a virtuous coworker reports Steve: he is caught, fired, and the company loses untold 50 cent pieces straightening out the legal consequences of Steve's greed and corruption. All 800 of the employees in our department had to take these stupid tutorials and sign a statement that we had taken them and understood them, but management was not required to take them and neither were the employees at our corporate office in Boston. Currently we (the dangerous ones) average about $15/hr, but they're looking for ways around that at the moment...

Okay, whatever. At least they're trying, huh? But I really got cranked when we then had to also watch a set of tutorials on how not to consort with known terrorists. I work in one of those 800# call centers and talk to about 100 honked off people a day. For all I know, ALL of them could be terrorists...they're as angry as terrorists. (Generally for excellent reasons.) We don't have access to the daily changing federal list of the 10 or 20 thousand or so known or suspected terrorists in the US, but we had to watch this stupid video about the list and sign a statement afterward saying we understood that if we were caught doing business with a terrorist we would be terminated and be subject to a punishment of up to 20 years in a federal prison.

Again, only we dangerous call center operators were made to do this. I told my supervisor, I'm a little apprehensive about signing all these things, what if I don't want to sign these stupid papers? And she said, um, I dunno...Please just sign 'em okay? She is currently on indefinite medical leave...

I'd quit, but in the depressed former factory town where I live this wacko place is currently the best game in town. I have two college degrees, 15 years of work experience in finance and office operations, and a state license to sell insurance products, and I make $17.43/hr and am watched like hawk so I don' manipulate world markets. I've been sending out resumes. For four years.

I did sign a nondisclosure agreement about all this too, so signing my real name to this letter could be dicey, but I'm thinking, at this point, one of those posh white collar prisons sounds a hair better than what I'm currently doing.

So, report me. Please!