Off with their Heads!

by Marie

The Queen of Hearts is the mirror image of how the powerful in American institutions operate. Displease her, and you were toast. But to displease her, you first had to come in contact with her, and powerful people in institutions rarely come in contact with anyone that challenges their authority. They are surrounded by like minded individuals that are as invested in propping up their little world as is whoever seats at the head of the table. Thus, heads at the top rarely roll.

It is not rare for institutions to find some low level peons to fire. But those matters are handled by those in positions far below the inner sanctorum and are carried out without any awareness by those at the top. Still, institutions resist firing those who should be fired – hoping that at some point they will resign and go away.

Chopping off heads requires specific conditions. First, the results must be directly attributable to the target, and second, the firing cannot be viewed as an admission that the superior erred or would be viewed by reasonable people as also being culpable in any way. (I’ll get to a third one later.) Either in hiring or promoting a grossly incompetent person or failing to exercise proper supervision of that person. Co-workers and subordinates of those who work with people like Bolton, Chertoff or Brown know how dreadful they are to the operation but have no choice but to groan in private and suck it up.

In a relatively small industry in the financial sector, firings for incompetence or errors were rare. Far more were fired for corruption, accepting kick-backs or gross expense account violations. The number that should have been fired for incompetence or expense account fudging is several times what it actually is. Firings at the upper levels were so rare that it was easy for those individuals that had wrecked havoc at one company to use their titles to move on to a higher position at another company, and another, managing to reach retirement age before their number was up.

9/11 changed nothing in this industry, but Enron did. The hit this industry took from the implosion of Enron was huge and also exposed the fact that “business as usual” had changed dramatically in the 1990’s and Enron was a symptom of a larger problem for it. Yet, it was still shocking when the first big head rolled.

The board of a large corporation was trying to come to grips with a loss of at least $300 million from Enron. The head of the department responsible for the Enron decisions was ordered to appear immediately. (He was on the golf course; so, he couldn’t appear immediately.) When he arrived and was asked to explain exactly what he had put the company on the hook for, he said, “I don’t know.” Whoops!

Since he was the only one that had enough authority to approve those Enron obligations, he couldn’t pass the buck either up or down further than on rung. Still, they didn’t fire him and his chief assistant on the spot. Not even when they realized that his department had put the company on the hook for more than the loss they were looking at (lucky for them Enron didn’t collapse earlier) or for the shoddy analysis of Enron’s financial position (a skilled analyst would have passed on the deal). He was let go because while he had the authority to approve hundred million dollar deals, this Enron deal (if he had understood what it was) was not within his authority.

Those were the only industry heads that dramatically rolled – the others quietly went away over the next couple of years as they industry paid out hundreds of millions of dollars. Most of them landed somewhere else, all of them had excuses as to why they had gotten a raw deal and most of those in the industry agreed with them or tried to make excuses for them. The truth of the matter is that almost everybody in the industry would have made those deals if they had had the opportunity to do so. They too wouldn’t have known what the deal was or have been able to analyze Enron’s financial position. The few who could do both, and said “Are you guys crazy?” weren’t popular. Nor rewarded after the Enron debacle. The new bosses were the same as the old bosses, only luckier because they weren’t able to jump on board the Enron gravy train when it was running.

The last condition under which big heads roll is when an institution is crumbling. It’s also another reason why those at the top are reluctant to fire those closest to the top. To fire one of those prompts others to question if this is a scapegoat firing to deflect attention from actions of others at the top. Once the “firing” under Nixon, it was a sure sign that the criminality went all the way to the top. Same with Enron. Thus, Bu$hCo can’t afford to fire anybody while the firestorm rages.

The public will support him in this. Better to let New Orleans sink into the muck and disappear than risk toppling our government and forcing 59 million morons to see that they voted for an idiot and his band of merry mischief makers. Or for many of those who didn't vote for an idiot to acknowledge that this country has gone through the looking glass.