Using the Five Fabrications from the Article Beyond Selfishness as a Template, Explain the Decline and Fall of EnronUsing the five fabrications from the article Beyond Selfishness as a template, explain the decline and fall of EnronWilliam Jennings Bryan once said, “No one can earn a million dollars honestly.” This quote pretty much summarizes Enron in a nutshell. What exactly caused the downfall of Enron? Was it the quest for power in the business world, greed for money? How does this fall under the five fabrications of Beyond Selfishness?Starting with the first fabrication, We are all, in essence, Economic Man. Enron was a corporation that prided itself in the profitability of their investments. The corporation was “willing to sacrifice a little of almost anything we care to name, even reputation or morality, for a sufficiently large quantity of other desired things.,, .”[1] During the period that the stock market started shooting upward, Enron became a company fixated on profitability. The higher the share earnings that were made, the more the corporation wanted their part. Profit was the word that became all that was important and was all that mattered.
Second Fabrication: Corporations Exist To Maximize Shareholder Value. Let’s face it, profitability does not correlate with maximizing the shareholder value. Holding the best interest of the shareholders definitely was not what was on the mind of the Enron corporation. Making money to line their pockets is what was on their mind. They did not see the anything past that. Their interests lie in making the money for themselves, or becoming the second wealthiest Colorado landowner and marrying strippers. Third Fabrication: Corporations Require Heroic Leaders: To hold the Enron leaders to a high standard was maybe something of a fairy tale. “But how could these chief executives, flesh-and-blood human beings like everyone else, deliver on such inflated expectations?”[2] Enron’s leaders were men of flesh and blood. Money, power and greed can sway such a person, no matter how strong and ethical the person may be. The strength of the corporation began to crumble with the corruption of its’ leaders.
2. Corporations Exist To Maximize Shareholder Value.
As a general rule, corporations that run their largest subsidiaries are not considered “corporate” entities, a label that could be interpreted as a neutral term. As one might expect, the “corporations” that run large, profitable corporate subsidiaries may be considered as not being connected to the actual entity to whom this corporation owes “financial assistance” of some kind. This would mean that the company’s leaders may also be, in reality, not tied to this company’s actual assets. The truth is, the vast majority of the company’s people have no real assets. The only source of financial assistance is a certain amount of a stock. This means that at any given time, the company may not be doing its part to bring about the ultimate reduction of corporate profits in this country. The only other information available to us is our own financial records.
3. Corporations Exist In The Creation Of The Biggest Corporate In The World, By Any Means Necessary.
Now let’s turn to those figures: the largest corporations were formed in the late 18th century. In the United States, there were 12,000 American corporations with subsidiaries, of which 7.25 billion were corporate entities. To put that number in perspective, consider the number of such mega-corporations as McDonalds, Coca-Cola, Caterpillar and Boeing. Consequently, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics during the twenty-first century, there were 23 “Corpus Behemoths”—a number which would not fit many people’s description. This does not mean that the large corporations were created solely to gain business from the larger and greater American citizens. Rather, they were created to maintain large and growing business units that will continue as long as the big three remain headquartered in Washington, Washington, B.C., with the additional corporations of smaller American companies as well. As we have seen, corporations that operate outside the law are not permitted to create money for themselves and for their shareholders.
In fact, the most basic corporate system is not created by a company, but a private investor in a given corporation. In the 1970s, an investor bought a company in the Cayman Islands, but in the early 1990s, the United States government authorized its citizen ownership of $45 billion of government securities. In 2005, President Obama signed legislation providing that these purchases with minimal shareholder rights would be prohibited. The law clearly states that the American business community is not allowed to make investments in a particular company, but this exemption will remain. The U.S. government only can have the right to make money based on laws enacted in the United States. The exception is a corporation owned by a family member of a corporation, who is allowed to purchase the company at market value. No other person can sell a shares of the company as they would purchase them from a shareholder.
The American corporation is not the country’s top tax filer. Under their laws, a corporation is taxed at a lower rate than the rate it pays its citizens for the public services they serve every day. If an individual is permitted to own the ownership of a particular corporation in the United States, they can pay a tax on that corporation’s dividends, which are taxed at a lower rate.
3. Corporations Exist To Maximize Shareholder Value
As I have already noted, corporate taxes are not set by the government. If the government paid the money, the corporation would not benefit from its tax. Instead, one would see the corporate tax rate rise by 25 to 30%, as if government officials simply provided the profit for the corporation. The corporate tax rate