ot. If the shoe fits all!
RealMoney.com : James J. Cramer WorldCom Shouldn't Be Allowed to Live
By James J. Cramer 09/05/2002 01:06 PM EDT
Indict WorldCom (WCOEQ:Nasdaq - news - commentary - research - analysis).
That's what the feds should do. You can't have a fraud this big and expect to stay in business. It just isn't right. There is no national interest that has to be protected here; people can switch to other phone companies. There is no justice, though, to allowing WorldCom to stay in business after all that it has done to take advantage of its shareholders and to wreck the marketplace. It makes no sense. Why should this company be allowed to continue operating?
Consider the contrast: Arthur Andersen. One could contend that the company was a recidivist, a repeated bad actor, so it had an indictment coming. Still, WorldCom had no chance to be a recidivist: it was a multiyear fraud. Why should someone who worked at the company and served in a high executive capacity as did John Sidgmore, the current CEO, continue?
Any company that competed against WorldCom knows that this was a crooked company that lied and lied and lied to get capital so it could continue to compete. It should have been out of business years ago.
Now it is allowed to stay in business as we indict one exec after another. That's just wrong. To hide $7 billion in fraud takes an army. The army was WorldCom.
The feds should indict the company. Now. That's the only way to level the playing field again and maintain some sense of justice after what WorldCom has perpetrated on the markets.
AI
