GROUND FLOOR: Bertie Ahern recently told the party faithful that the Irish economy would accelerate rapidly once the international outlook improved, but recent US numbers might delay that day even further.
Unemployment in the US is at 5.7 per cent and markets were taken aback by the fall in consumer confidence, now at its lowest level in nine years. The Chicago purchasing managers index came in at 45.9 from 48.1 and US gross domestic product grew at 0.7 per cent in the third quarter. Added to the weight of bleak news from across the Atlantic are the dramatic twists and turns inherent in trying to re-regulate corporate America and keep company executives on the straight and narrow.
Unfortunately the fall-out has hit the regulators - with Securities and Exchange Commission head Harvey Pitt resigning earlier this week - and yet again I find I'm almost sobbing with despair at the actions of people paid to know better.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is the watchdog for the US financial sector. It employs around 3,000 people including more than 100 accountants and nearly 150 lawyers. Last month a report by the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee concluded that energy giant Enron's unethical and fraudulent behaviour was, in part, facilitated by the SEC.
The report highlighted lax practices by the SEC, including its approval of the highly suspect gas trading deals that allowed the company to report exaggerated earnings and revenue.
You'd think that the then head of the commission, Harvey Pitt, would have been feeling pretty uncomfortable about that but he was far too busy choosing someone to head up the new Public Company Accounting Oversight Board to worry.
In a move that would be edited out of a financial thriller as being far too implausible, Pitt offered the job to 78-year-old former FBI and CIA chief William Webster. Naturally I don't want to be ageist but I would've thought somebody a bit younger might be more up to speed with the current crop of accounting wheezes that allow firms to report fudged revenue.
In any event, neither the FBI nor the CIA have covered themselves in much glory in recent years and you'd think someone with more relevant experience might equally have been considered. And finally - the best bit - Webster was an audit committee chairman of US Technologies Inc, a company being sued for fraud. He resigned from the board earlier this year when told the firm couldn't give him liability insurance against investors' claims.
Pitt, the man then in charge of an organisation supposed to ensure that all corporate process is whiter than white, managed not to tell his fellow committee members about Webster's involvement with US Technologies before they ratified his appointment.
Then Pitt asked the SEC's internal investigator to investigate the appointment process of which he himself was the lead manager, while Democratic senator Paul Sarbanes asked the General Accounting Office to investigate too.
Sarbanes was also trying to find out whether or not Congress could fire Pitt but nobody was sure about whether it could. There was a political angle, of course, since Pitt was a Republican appointee, a lawyer who represented many hot-shot Wall Street firms before taking up his position, and was consequently seen by many as being far too close to the people he was meant to regulate. Harvey Pitt's resignation brought his participation in the drama to an end.
The overall situation is, like so many things in business and political life, a complete mess and shows no one in a good light. If these are the people we're depending on to make us feel comfortable with business ethics in the US we're in big trouble.
It hasn't all been bad news, though, since at least one retired corporate executive has, at least temporarily, managed to stave off potentially the biggest trouble of his career.
Jack and Jane Welch are in the process of settling their impending divorce case - no doubt a big relief to Jack, the former chief executive of General Electric. In his 451-page biography - the book in which he details how to keep employees on their toes by dismissing the bottom 10 per cent every year - Jane is referred to on 19 pages (compared to 44 about employee appraisals).
He called her the perfect partner but then decided to have an affair with a journalist sent to interview him. Perfect Jane might have been, but not perfectly stupid.
Three years after her pre-nup expired she filed for divorce, which opened a can of worms about Jack's continued benefits from his erstwhile corporation. They included the payment of condo fees for his New York property, appliances in all his homes (well, GE is an appliance company!) property taxes, medical services, flowers, staff and tickets to sporting events.
In his affidavit, Jack admits to a total monthly income of more than $1.4 million and monthly expenses of $366,114, which includes $51,531 on five homes, $9,000 a month on food and drink, and $2,000 on clothes.
Jack has had multiple heart attacks and a quintuple bypass. Maybe he should cut back on the food and drink bill. His total assets are listed at $456,183,000 (though many think he's worth twice as much) and it seems his initial offer to Jane was about $15-20 million dollars, although he later said he'd offered her "many multiples of that". Jane's own monthly income is $11,360 and she gets $35,000 from her estranged husband.
But that isn't enough to keep her in the style to which she was accustomed for the past 13 years.
I think Jane is worth a lot more than $20 million. After all, as Jack himself says, he only won the club championship at Sankaty Head in Nantucket after he married her. Should be worth a few extra million given how much golf means to him. (Golf gets 19 mentions in the book too.)
As a husband, Jack clearly falls into the bottom 10 per cent, which would have had him fired from GE. He considered letting those people go as a kind act, on the basis that they would never prosper in the company. Jane has adopted his own strategy. If only she could get a job with the SEC!
