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The Greed Cycle

In: Business and Management

Submitted By anna26
Words 1280
Pages 6
The article “The Greed Cycle” is an in depth look of the advancements in the ways business compensates its heads of industry. The article links the trend of corruption among executives when there was lax regulation, and methods of fixing numbers. The question that is purposed by the article is if greed comes naturally; or if it is an evolution that corporate America creates. It is true that the creation of Sarbanes-Oxley has significantly prevented the events that occurred regarding CEOs and the stock option crisis. There have been numerous recent events, however, that have occurred with CEOs and others alike make me believe John Cassidy’s theory that there is validity to his theory of a greed cycle.

The problem was regulation; there were none. Stock options were engaging executives in achieving the goals of the company, while also allowing the company to not count their stock options as a corporate expense. It was a win- win situation for both executive and company. Because of this the stock option plans for executives were an emerging trend for most well known companies. How government officials purposely denied the idea from the Financial Accounting Standards Board (F.A.S.B.) to count stock options as an expense is hard to fathom. When has there ever been a time the government not wanted to receive their share of someone’s fortune? The greed of senators receiving money from lobbyist helped the system stay intact in 1994: after they threatened to shut down the F.A.S.B. The suggestion from the F.A.S.B. was the voice of reason; and if it had been listened to there would have not been this turmoil. David Yermack’s wrote an article about stock manipulation in 1997 for the Journal of Finance. The article discussed how companies could either announce good or bad earnings at the time of the company’s choosing. This practice was ignored by everyone; even when it

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