If Bill Clinton Were
A CEO

Rightwing Liars just love to say: “If Bill Clinton had been a CEO (when he had his affair with Monica), he would have been fired.” 

Well, folks, let’s look at this statement

•  Was it Bill Clinton, CEO, who manipulated energy markets to cause an electricity supply crisis in California, almost bankrupting the state so he could profit from a contrived, non-existent crisis?  (No, that was Ken Lay, CEO of Enron, major Republican contributor, friend of G. W. Bush.)

•  Was it Bill Clinton, CEO, who used a $19 million, no-interest loan to buy a 15,000-square-foot Florida waterfront mansion?  And, while he was at it, was it Bill Clinton, CEO, who used $25 million of his company’s money to furnish his apartment with a $6,000 shower curtain and a $15,000 umbrella stand — while trying to avoid paying taxes on millions of dollars of artwork?  (No, that was Dennis Kozlowski, CEO of Tyco, major Republican contributor.)

•  Was it Bill Clinton, CEO, who accepted $3.1 BILLION in off-the-balance-sheet loans from his company so that he could, among other things, build his own private golf course?  (Not Clinton; that was the Regas family of Adelphia Communications.)

•  It must have been Bill Clinton, CEO, who borrowed over $400 million from his company to cover personal stock market losses.  (No, that was Bernie Ebbers of WorldCom.)

Now, consider this 

If we look at the period 1999 to 2002 and take all the companies that are under investigation for shady or illegal accounting and for fraud, this is what we find:

• CEOs of these companies pocketed $1.4 BILLION — an average of $20 million per day of lying, cheating, and stealing.

• While the CEOs were stealing their companies blind, the value of their firms dropped by $530 BILLION — that’s $530 BILLION in value out of the U. S. economy just because of CEO crime.

• Further, between January 2001 and August 2002, CEOs at firms now under investigation laid off 162,000 workers.

• So, all in all, about 60 people walked off with over ONE BILLION DOLLARS while laying off 162,000 people and taking $530 BILLION in savings, investments, and retirement money out of the economy.

 In Conclusion

Now, tell me again about how, if Bill Clinton had been a CEO he would have been fired.  I guess that depends on the meaning of “had been.”