What's the Difference Between a Crook and a Corporate Executive?

This morning I learned that a woman a few years older than I am, let's call her Sylvia, was laid off on Thursday. For eleven years, Sylvia had been a rep for the big cosmetic companies, servicing the department stores along the Eastern Seacoast with perfume products . She is beautiful, charming, generous, and I can't imagine her not being great at her job, because sales involves charm, and Sylvia certainly has a lot.

Every time I meet her at the hair salon, Sylvia has been engaging, remembered what I might have told her the visit before, and just one of those people who is fun to be around.

In November, her husband was in a terrible car accident in Florida. She doesn't live in Florida. But this is the kind of person Sylvia is: she had sat next to a woman on the plane going down to meet her husband and the woman was with her when Sylvia learned of the accident. So for ten days, her new friend drove her back and forth to the hospital and gave her a room in her home, so that Sylvia could care for her husband until he was released and they could fly home.

Now that's the kind of person Sylvia is. So when on Thursday, she was called into Human Resources and laid off, she was horrified, relieved, angry, humiliated, a thousand and one emotions ran through her body. Yes, she is getting severance, and a generous package, but this is a terrible time since her husband is laid up with a broken leg and ankle. However, the anger was that her boss has no charm, has no humanity, so Sylvia was wondering how this company will continue without human beings making human contact and forming relationships. Relationships are what we believed make business possible and profitable.

But in this economic climate, what we are learning is that business is profitable because of scams, crookery, and bad judgment.

Take Bernard L. Madoff, the former head of NASDAQ who is accused of bilking $50 billion from hedge funds, little old Jewish ladies, and charitable foundations. (Another friend of mine's mother is a victim of Madoff's. She has been living on the proceeds of her investments with him for almost forty years. She might spend her last years on earth totally and absolutely broke!) Madoff founded the investment company in 1960 and even withstood an SEC investigation into his investment business in 1992. According to the latest indictment, his investments were always questionable, so we should be asking how he got away for so long, especially after the first investigation.

Which brings us to the automakers. Thirty years ago, when Chysler was bailed out, the Department of Transportation issued a report that essentially said: Detroit is not building fuel efficient cars, Detroit is not building high quality cars that people want to buy, Detroit's leadership is blind. Read Elizabeth Kolbert's piece in the December 8, 2008 The New Yorker.

Now Madoff is bringing down a lot of hedge funds and wealthy investors, allegedly to the tune of $50 billion. But how many people will the auto makers be bringing down? One estimate is that one in ten jobs is directly affected. What is the difference between Madoff's ponzi scheme and how American corporations have been run?