Some Good News

It’s become painful to pick up the business section of the newspaper these days. My once-beloved morning routine now is preceded by trepidation. I find myself asking: What company and/or executive is in the hot seat today? WorldCom, Enron, Martha Stewart, Tyco, Arthur Andersen—once stalwarts in their respective industries—have become poster children for the post-boom era. The result is that fingerpointing has become a new national pastime. Some Democrats are saying the Bush administration hasn’t been hard enough on wayward business executives. Robert Samuelson, who covers the economy for Newsweek, recently wrote that the media is partly to blame. He argues that journalists who incessantly hawk bad business news are contributing to the country’s foul mood and the stock market’s downward spiral.