IRVINE, CA – “The current frenzy over corporate accounting
scandals is not a reaction to fraud--it's an attack on business and
capitalism,” said Robert Tracinski, a senior fellow at the Ayn Rand
Institute.
The people leading the hysteria about corporate
crime are eager to expose and condemn any alleged fraud by private
businessmen--but they ignore or excuse actual fraud committed by
government officials. They demand strict accounting regulations
to prevent billion-dollar business frauds--while they evade
responsibility for a trillion-dollar government
fraud.
Tracinski points to the world’s largest fraudulent
scheme, Social Security, which is run not by a corrupt corporation,
but by the United States government. “The Social Security program
takes one-eighth of the income of the current generation of workers
and promises them a secure retirement--to be paid for by fleecing
the next generation of workers.
“Eventually, as with any such
scheme, the number of new suckers coming into the system is not
enough to pay the benefits owed to retirees. This is projected to
happen in the next 10 to fifteen years, causing Social Security to
go bankrupt--but no one in Washington is demanding an end to Social
Security.
“To tolerate wholesale fraud and theft by
government--while posing as a moralistic crusader against fraud by
private businesses--is a con game that makes the crowd at Enron look
like small-timers.”
Source: Ayn Rand Institute