Molly Ivins March 30

AUSTIN — Proof once more that great minds think alike: The current issue of The Nation magazine features an article on "Crime in the Suites" by Bob Sherrill. Sherrill's review of a year's worth of "civil and criminal corruption, sleaze, unhinged greed and other anti-social antics of some of the businesses that shape our lives" was culled from one year's reading of The Wall Street Journal.

I am occasionally accused of being a communist, something that will happen to anyone who dares to challenge the notion that government exists to create a healthy bidness climate. For many years, I have explained that everything I know about the workings of capitalism I learned not from Mr. Marx but by reading The Wall Street Journal.

Sherrill's splendid recap of financial follies was limited to 1996, a vintage year with billions in fraud and theft but not one conviction involving serious prison time or a single fine that amounted to more than a flea on the derriere of the elephant of profits involved.

I especially enjoyed the instructive tale of the three executives who lied to federal inspectors about the hazardous conditions in the shafts of the Pyro Mining Co. A methane gas explosion in the mines in 1989 then killed 10 workers. Last year, the executives finally drew sentences for the deaths of 10 people; they ranged from five months to 18 months. The executives were also fined. Sherrill got out his abacus and figured out that the fines came to $300 a body. Workers are such a bargain.

As an homage to ol' Sherrill, I'd like to present the results of just one week's worth of reading the WSJ. Last week, we started with the delightful news that Alan Greenspan of the Federal Reserve decided to raise interest rates, thus slowing the economy, thus throwing people out of work. And why, you may ask, did Mr. Greenspan so act? Are we suffering from roaring inflation? Is this the "terrible medicine" that conservatives believe in and applied back in the early '80s to stop inflation?

Well, no, there's not a sign of inflation anywhere around. But the bankers and bondholders are unhappy about low interest rates, and bankers and bondholders feel that they have a right to happiness. And many of those quoted in the WSJ feel that after a seven-year economic expansion, with profits getting higher and higher and higher, there's a good possibility that workers will start demanding a larger share of those profits. And we couldn't have that, could we? Like Oliver Twist in the workhouse, the workers might actually ask for more.

"The board was sitting in solemn conclave when Mr.

Bumble rushed into the room in great excitement, and, addressing the gentleman in the high chair, said, 'Mr. Limbkins, I beg your pardon, sir! Oliver Twist has asked for MORE!'

"There was a general start. Horror was depicted on every countenance.

"'For MORE?!' said Mr. Limbkins." (Courtesy of Charles Dickens and political cartoonist Ben Sargent, who reminded me of it.)

As regular readers of the WSJ know full well, it's just worry, worry, worry on Wall Street. According to an expert quoted in Thursday's editions, the strong dollar is eating a real hole in earnings. Ha! You probably thought the strong dollar was a good thing, didn't you? Pinhead. The strong dollar is hurting IBM, Eastman Kodak and all the multinational companies.

And on top of that, there are worrisome signs of price competition, and price competition is bad for earnings, too. Don't you just hate it when that happens? Price competition reducing earnings? Many of our great corporations have tried to do something about that very problem — see last year's reports on Archer-Daniels-Midland.

The Nike shoe people are in the news again over these nasty allegations that the foreign workers who make their products are mistreated and underpaid. You may be interested to learn that such practices are not limited to foreign shores.

Many companies right here in the U.S. of A. regularly violate the minimum-wage laws; according to the Journal, 43 percent of garment makers pay illegally low wages, and the practice is common in trucking companies, restaurants and construction firms. Many more companies fail to pay for overtime work. They can get away with it because the Labor Department's inspection team has been cut by 15 percent; the remaining 500 inspectors are trying to police 6 million employers, which means that the employers have an excellent chance of not getting caught and don't get fined much if they do.

Finally, some good news in last week's Journal: Lawrence M. Coss, CEO of the Green Tree Financial Corp., had a truly satisfactory year in 1996, for which reason he has just been awarded a bonus of $102 million. What makes this so piquant is that Green Tree Financial makes its moolah by financing mobile homes. The company doesn't make mobile homes, mind you; it makes money by lending money to people so they can buy mobile homes.

Now, as you know, people who buy mobile homes are not what we readers of the WSJ know as "upscale consumers." These citizens, sometimes unkindly referred to as "trailer trash," are more your low-end consumers. Some might even call them poor. But Mr. Coss of Green Tree Financial, now the biggest player in the mobile-home financing field, charges these citizens a "premium" (such a lovely word) of two to three percentage points above mortgage rates for conventional homes. And that's why Green Tree could afford that nice little bonus received by Coss.

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Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

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