Lowering of values” “” “

The process of the industrial revolution is unstoppable. The dimensions of industrial plant, and of the services that provide services of every type – commercial, financial, transport –, are constantly growing. Ever larger markets, ever greater production, need to be controlled, and this makes possible the lowering of costs thanks to a productivity that is constantly rising. However, these advantageous aspects of big business corporations, whose definitive dimensions can never be exactly determined – the panorama of the multinationals enjoys, in this sense, excellent health –, demand significant investments, which go far beyond the material capacities of their founders. It thus becomes necessary to woo countless savers who purchase shares and are thus converted (juridically speaking) into part owners of the enterprise. This is a new situation. It has made it necessary to apply an accountancy system hitherto the monopoly of the State: the accountancy of control. Someone, particularly scrupulous, who is represented in the State by offices of auditors, treasuries, inspectorates, auditing courts, was supposed to assume the task of verification on behalf of shareholders, who have become part-owners but who, with their small individual participations, have no intention, or no prospect, of forming part of the boards of directors, which in turn are responsible for telling them the truth. The implications that derive from this situation with a view to the efficient functioning of the equities markets are such that the State could not remain indifferent to these mechanisms of accountancy control, in general entrusted to specialized private firms, a significant percentage of which operate at the international level. However, almost from one day to the next, one had the impression that all this apparatus had collapsed. These agencies of control, which appeared incorruptible and highly competent, as in the case of Arthur Andersen in the Enron scandal, neither showed themselves to be competent nor gave the impression of acting within an ethical framework inspired by transparency. From this moment onwards, the chain, whose final link (for the time being) is the Parmalat case, has begun to be lengthened out of all proportion. Businesses in various countries are beginning to have their reputation tarnished, as happened in the European Union with Vivendi, in France with Alstom, in Italy with Parmalat or in the USA with Enron. In Spain, a recent study of the National Commission of the Equities Market has underlined the fact that, as reported by the last number of the magazine “Expansión” (10 January 2004), “no business quoted on the stock exchange satisfies all the requisites of good management”. The fundamental problem might consist in the fact that Christian values, for many people, have been lost, and this phenomenon has brought with it the deterioration of conduct and, consequently, insecurity in the business and commercial world. From one moment to the next, without it being the intention of anyone to reach this result, it has now become clear that ethics is a good thing for economic progress or, if you prefer, that its lack generates phenomena of recession that may also lead to grave crises. Taking all this into account starting out from an agnostic point of view, seems by no means an easy task. The only solution, in that case, would be to appeal to the control of the public Administration. But it has to be recognized that this leads in turn to a growth of rigidity, and since, as all economists by now agree, interventionism is the father of corruption, we find ourselves once again faced by the fact that, in the absence of the sound moral education of citizens, there is little to be done.