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In the time of my confession, in the hour of my deepest need
When the pool of tears beneath my feet flood every newborn seed
There's a dyin' voice within me reaching out somewhere,
Toiling in the danger and in the morals of despair.
- Bob Dylan

In the beginning or thereabouts…
In America in the '70s there was power in flowers. When people were good and corporations were bad. And the Government was synonymous with war mongering. The cold war spread its clammy fingers across most parts of the world's consciousness. In the seventies it was cool to be a budding musician. A beat poet. An activist. A Haight-Ashbury bum. In fact the truly uncool ones were the suits. The executives. The white collars. In the post glow of the Joplin-Hendrix-Morrison meteors, the Dead and CSNY lit up the night sky like little stars. The sound of a guitar strumming was the sound of the seventies.

Through the first half of the eighties the hangover lasted, and heck it felt good. Many of the hippies and bums turned respectable and slunk around with ties and families. But corporations remained the bad guys.

There's an old country song that goes
"This old house is built on dreams
And a businessman don't know what that means..."

The turning point…
And then in 1987, came a movie called Wall Street. A mivie that emerged as a watershed, clearly delineating what came before from the years after. For those of you who have not seen Wall Street - grab a look before the put the movie into the museum or have it banned. Gordon Gecko, played by Michael Douglas, uses everybody and everything around him to fuel his acquisitive needs and to feed his ruthless credo. In doing so, he coined the Mantra that was to drive businesses and shape societal values for over the next decade and more. He said, "Greed is good".

Whether Gordon Gecko survived or not, his single, 3-word credo gave legitimacy to a growing shift of power to the business people. Coinciding as it did with some serious technological innovation, it also armed businesses and businessmen with the tools to feed the greed.

What followed was unparalleled wealth creation. The likes of which has not been seen ever before, and will, in all probability, not be again.

Thanks in part to Gordon Geck, the 80s and 90s saw "managers" basking in a never-before glow of cooldom. Being an exec was in. It meant global lifestyles, jets, fast cars and of course, women. Even the sex goddesses of the era were clad in formals, not in swim suits. Think Sharon Stone, think Demi Moore.

Tom Peters made Business Books cool. Starting with the relatively sober "In Search Of Excellence" all the way to the flamboyant "In Pursuit of WOW". In the 90s, you wanted to write a book about beating the street, not a song about walking the street. The sound of the 90s was the sound of cash registers. Of BMWs and of Ka Ching!

The times they are a changing…
The next real watershed year was 2001-02. The year of the bust, the year of 9/11 and finally, the year of Enron. 9/11 may stand out as the political and military event of the century, but for businesses, it's hard to say which will create the biggest ripples. My vote goes to Enron. The bust was an exposition of foolishness. 9/11 meant the creation of new battle grounds with old enemies. But Enron is a sign of the rot that has set in, inside. It's the enemy within. And this is why it's more dangerous.

Today, as the cloak of boardroom secrecy is ripped to shreds and corporate greed stands exposed - as base unacceptable criminial greed, one can only think back to Gordon Gecko and wonder, is that where it all went wrong?

WorldCom found accounting errors to the tune of 7 Billion dollars. Its executives were publicly arrested and handcuffed. Enron is still unraveling. Like the Titanic, it's taking many others with it on its painful and inexorable downward journey. Every kind of corporate sin is turning up there. White collar crime is now part of our everyday lexicon. Companies of the stature of GE and AOL Time Warner are squirming under the public microscope.

Don't have the inclination to look back on any mistake,
Like Cain, I now behold this chain of events that I must break.
In the fury of the moment I can see the Master's hand
In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand.
- Bob Dylan

Lets remind ourselves of some more case facts. Enron's share price went from $ 36 to less than $1 in less than 3 months. In that time, I came to light that Enron had been engaging in clearly illegal activities for many months. From mis-stating income to hiding expenses. Attempting to cover up the investigation on the basis of its significant political connections (single biggest contributor to the George W Bush campaign). Colluding with its Auditor, not curiously, also its advisor and consultant. Using special purpose entities (off balance sheet). Enron also "discovered" a large number of operating irregularities after it was put into the dock. Trading strategies that manipulated California's energy market at a time when the state was undergoing major power shortages and energy price increases. The list goes on…

Or take the case of Xerox and KPMG - an equally sordid saga that has escaped public censure probably because people are still gasping at Enron and Worldcom. Over the late 90s, the true greed years, XEROX engaged in innumerable schemes to circumvent the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) in order to shore up their balance sheet. From creating off-balance-sheet vehicles (like Enron did) to colluding with their auditors, XEROX tried everything. Today, XEROX, KPMG and the SEC are actively discussing the finer points, with the former two blaming each other and releasing holier than thou press statements. For the record, XEROX paid a fine of $ 10 million to settle the issue with SEC. Remember, this is XEROX, the company we've all admired almost as much as Apple. Xerox's investors want KPMG want KPMG to financially share the blame for the tumble of value at Xerox (from $60 to $15 in a few months). That KPMG is not the victimized innocents they claim to be is rather apparent from the similar imbroglios at Rite Aid and in the Lernout and Hauspie Speech Product Cases.

Then there's the rest of the brigade, from Adelphia and Andersen, to Global Crossing and Tyco.

These and many other cases like these, remind us of the fact that never in the history of business, have so many contributed so much to the wealth creation of so few. The Bernie Ebbers and Dennis Kozlowski's of the world have taken conspicuous consumption to dizzying new heights, the latter getting his company to spend $400 on a pincushion, $6000 on a shower curtain and $17,000 on a traveling toilet box. All this directly or indirectly at the expense of a whole army of employees and investors who are left wondering about the disappearance of their jobs, their pensions and their savings.

I have gone from rags to riches in the sorrow of the night
In the violence of a summer's dream, in the chill of a wintry light,
In the bitter dance of loneliness fading into space,
In the broken mirror of innocence on each forgotten face.
- Bob Dylan

Wrong Answers
It's common for these privileged criminals to hide behind the conflict of interest argument. As though that casts a blanket of condone-ment on their crimes. Every one of us has been faced with situations where the rights and wrongs present themselves to us in clever disguises. Conflict of interest is not something you encounter for the first time as the CEO of a global corporation. It's something you encounter when your 7 years old. Or when you're raising children. Or judging a contest in school where your friends are contestants. And often your ability to handle such conflicts tells us whether you're ready to handle responsibility or not. And accepting the consequences of the choices in the face of such conflicts, is the painful process we have come to know as growing up. And ultimately, after the dust has settled and all the legislations have been passed, it will still boil down to the way we handle conflicts of interest from minute to minute and from day to day. You may choose to govern yourself, or you may choose to be watched by God. But as children, as accountants, as investors, as thieves, as CEO's and as legislators, you would do well to keep these words in mind:

I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea
Sometimes I turn, there's someone there, other times it's only me.
I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man
Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand.
- Bob Dylan

And here's the irony. Growing up in the third world, we're a lot more comfortable with corruption and crime. It's the way things are. We do not believe that our politicians are honest. Or that our leading businessmen are great believerts and upholders of the law. But America is a country of beliefs. Things work in the US because people have faith in the system and the system works. This is why Enron is so dangerous. It provides proof that the system has not been working. Not for quite a while. And a lot of people have suffered for the ill-gotten gains of the few. And unless this is quickly arrested, this could be the biggest blow to public confidence. That under the shining veneer of successful capitalism, white collar crime has been hard at work. Making it no different from India, or Pakistan or Japan. Worse, because here, we've learnt to live around it.

Oh, the flowers of indulgence and the weeds of yesteryear,
Like criminals, they have choked the breath of conscience and good cheer.
The sun beat down upon the steps of time to light the way
To ease the pain of idleness and the memory of decay.
- Bob Dylan

What lies ahead? What will the next decade or two be like? Will greed go away? Unlikely. It will definitely become less cool, though. Will white collar crime go away? Definitely not. What will happen though, is that the scrutiny on the eitire white-collar brigade will continue in its most intense form. The spotlight will stay focused on the necks of CEOs and CFOs to ensure that there isn' dirt hiding under those crisp whites. Moreover, accountants, executives and tycoons will abandon public worship of Gordon Gecko and instead embrace Bob Dylan. Is this a return to the 70s? Only in part. Dylan didn't write songs for accountants. But in a particularly god-fearing phase, wrote the words to a song that is strewn across this essay, which will probably be the corporate badge of the next few years, and should, in my opinion, be adopted as the anthem of the accounting profession.

I gaze into the doorway of temptation's angry flame
And every time I pass that way I always hear my name.
Then onward in my journey I come to understand
That every hair is numbered like every grain of sand.
- Bob Dylan