I realize that the Jan. 17 article "Corporate Japan: woeful lack of outside directors" was on Corporate Japan, but actually fraud and deception are no different within any big corporation.
America has had its Enron and MF Global bankruptcies and many more scandals that aren't even investigated such as America's 2008 financial collapse, which was caused by fraud that was never really examined. Most of America's scandals are of a scale that makes the one in Japan [Olympus Corp.] look tame by comparison.
Within the city of London and New York, the financial wizards can do almost anything they want through fraud and Ponzi schemes, just by buying and selling debt that "creates" money from thin air. The U.K. and U.S. governments sit back and say there are no laws to prevent this — in other words, theft is legal.
If [Olympus] were an American Bank and not a Japanese company, the government would bail it out without the people's consent, and no CEO would be held accountable. The theft would then continue on a much larger scale. The company's thinking would be that since it got away with it the first time, if it makes a bad bet again, it can always get bailed out again.
That is the new free market capitalism at work. Should Japan import that? Japan has lots of little problems, but compared with the United Kingdom and United States, it is like a breath of fresh air.
The opinions expressed in this letter to the editor are the writer's own and do not necessarily reflect the policies of The Japan Times.
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