02 July 27, 2002 - ObserverXtra

Taking it “easy” in the middle-aged market
It seems like every
town or city has a
radio station that
promotes itself as “easy
listening.” This is a
euphemism for “old
people’s music.” Any
phrase that starts with the
word “easy” is generally
aimed at the middle-aged
market. Easy living, easy
payments, easy chair. The
only exception is “easy
women,” which is geared
to a younger crowd. The
reason that the word
“easy” is so irresistible to
those of us higher mileage
types is that we’ve
experienced enough
“difficult” in so many
areas of our lives that
we’re not looking for
another challenge. And
there’s an implication that
your other choices are not
JULY 27, 2002 • OPINION&LETTERS • WOOLWICH OBSERVER 9
RED GREEN QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"Age is a very high price to pay for maturity."
Why are we surprised by financial turmoil?
If your RRSPs are
performing like mine,
then we’ve just taken
care of that labour shortage
that Statistics Canada
was warning about last
week; most of us will need
to keep working until age
85 just to put food on the
table. Until a year ago,
many people seemed to
believe that the stock
market only went up; now
it appears that the market
may never go up again.
How did this happen?
Let’s start by examining
the role of the media in
creating the bubble that
was bound to burst. In a
chapter of the book “Just
Making Change” (entitled
“The fix is in. Big
time”), journalist Bruce
Rogers accurately predicted
that “the bias of
the media could burn the
unwary. Business interests
have helped define
the newspaper and serious
journalism for centuries,
and most business
journalism in radio and
television is uncritical
cheerleading.”
Now, RRSPs and private
pension plans are taking
the biggest hit as stocks
spiral down the toilet –
and the hand on the toilet
handle is none other than
good old-fashioned corporate
greed (something
which we apparently
didn’t mind so much, as
long as our mutual funds
were going up). Think
how much worse the situation
could have been if
the Canadian Alliance
nearly as pleasant. If Exhibit
A is an easy chair,
then Exhibit B must be a
hard chair. And doesn’t
easy living sound more
appealing than hard
living? Even with the radio
station comparison, the
one with the music you
like is called “easy
listening.” The others are
“difficult listening,”
believe me. Especially on a
Saturday morning coming
out of my neighbour’s
son’s van at full volume. I
am definitely not on Easy
Street.
TENURE
You can generally figure
out how good an idea is by
how long it lasts. A
hundred years later, we’re
still talking on phones and
driving cars, while
dirigibles and bomb
had got what they have
long advocated: the complete
privatization of the
Canada Pension Plan.
Imagine what would have
happened if these funds
were invested in the stock
market, along with your
RRSP.
NDP labour critic Pat
Martin has called for immediate
government action
in response to the financial
crisis. In particular,
he asked the Prime
Minister to “raise the
standard of auditing practices
in financial reporting,”
to impose regulations
to prohibit auditors
from providing other financial
services to the
companies they audit, and
to remove the firm Arthur
Andersen, implicated in
the Enron and Worldcom
collapses, immediately as
auditors for the Bank of
Canada.
It’s highly unlikely that
Chretien will even do the
tentative posturing being
practiced on this issue by
“Dubya.” That’s because,
more than any other federal
party, his Liberals
rely on major corporations
for funding.
With a leadership review
underway and individual
party members
jumping off his bandwagon,
he’ll be even more
reliant on the Power Corporations,
the BCEs, and
the Bombardiers of the
country for support. He
won’t pass a law prohibiting
the federal government
from doing business
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shelters have fallen off the
radar. This creates an
opportunity for you to feel
good about something and,
if you’re around my age,
that doesn’t happen often.
So take a look at your life
and see if you can find
anything that’s lasted for a
while. Maybe it’s a tool or
a radio or a car or a hat.
The longer you’ve had it,
the better the idea to get it
was in the first place. If
you’ve lived in the same
house for more than five
years, take credit for a
good idea, rather than
blame your inability to sell
it based on the fact that you
paid too much for it in the
first place. It even works on
a personal level. Any
marriage that’s lasted
more than 20 years must
have been a good idea.
MYOPINION
BY SCOTT PIATKOWSKI
with companies convicted
of fraud. He won’t require
auditors to maintain their
independence from the
companies that they are
supposed to be policing.
He certainly won’t ban
corporate contributions to
political parties. In other
words, don’t expect much
help from Ottawa on this
one, folks.
Since we’re largely on
our own in trying to make
the best of the financial
morass, freelance journalist
Harvey Schachter suggests
that we read “Financial
Shenanigans” by
Howard Schilit. In last
Friday’s Globe, Schachter
notes that the book “reminds
us that accounting
sleight-of-hand is not a recent
phenomenon.
(Schilit) presents a long
list of well-known companies
that in the past 15
years resorted to questionable,
though not necessarily
fraudulent accounting…
But the message
is clear: This isn’t
new and it isn’t going to go
away easily, because as his
book shows, accounting
NORTH OF40
BY RED GREEN
Look at yourself and how
long you’ve lasted. Your
parents may have not
thought you were such a
good idea away back when,
but every time you
celebrate another
birthday, you prove them
more and more wrong.
THINGS THAT GO
FASTER
They say that most
things slow down as you
get older. Well here are a
can be flexible and when
companies hit tough times
— individually or collectively
— some will be
tempted to disguise it by
using the most favourable
accounting interpretation
possible.” According to
Schilit, companies cheat
because “(1) it pays to do
it, (2) it’s easy to do, and (3)
it’s unlikely you will get
caught… Even when they
are caught, the penalty is
often too little, too late.”
Vermont Representative
Bernie Sanders (the only
self-declared socialist in
the U.S. Congress) points
out that the financial meltdown
is “not just about ac-
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few that go faster:
• Your energy.
• Your patience.
• Your trick knee.
• A long weekend.
• Spicy food.
FOUR ON THE FLOOR
We went up to a friend’s
cottage this past weekend,
and my wife did all the
driving. It works better
that way. She’s a little
better driver than I am, but
I’m a way better passenger
than she is. I was looking
out the window at the
other cars, and quite often
the cars contained two
couples. So I would try to
guess whether the couples
were double-dating or
whether they were just two
married couples going
counting.” He argues that
“the American people
have a much better understanding
than members of
the Bush administration
or members of Congress
that this is not just about
a few bad rules or a few
bad apples. This is about
how corporations do business
in America today, and
about what members of
Congress who take immense
amounts of corporate
money to finance
their campaigns allow
those corporations to get
away with.
Sure, corporations and
their accountants have
taken advantage of loop-
somewhere together. I
think I got pretty good at
it. My first observation
was that if it was daylight
outside, they’re probably
married. If the men are in
the front seat, they’re also
married. If the men are in
the back seat, they’re long
married. If everybody’s in
the back seat, they’re
dating. If the men are
doing the talking, they’re
dating. If the women are
doing the talking, they’re
married. If nobody’s doing
the talking, they’re long
married. If they’re all
giggling and laughing and
having a great party,
they’re either dating or
married, just not to each
other.
holes and lax regulations to
inflate their earnings statements,
and sure they have
used their campaign contributions
to make sure
that the loopholes stay
open and that the regulators
let them get away with
murder. But if you close
the loopholes and increase
the level of oversight, that
is not going to usher in a
new era of corporate responsibility.
If all that
comes out of this are a few
accounting reforms — necessary
as they may be —
most Americans are going
to say, rightly, that the corporations
were let off the
hook again.”
THE VIEW FROM HERE by S. Arnold
“WELL, AT LEAST WE FINALLY GOT SOME RAIN.”
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