Bernard Axelrad Scholarship Fund

Have we become a jaded, cynical people unable to distinguish between right and wrong!

Pick up the page of any newspaper, and it's full of scams, arrests, indictments, pleas and trials of people in high public office or responsible positions of trust.

The record of derelictions seems endless and all-encompassing.

Recently, prominent in the public print media, we have the guilty pleas of Ivan Boesky, Dennis Levine and Martin Siegel - along with a host of other highly placed insider traders charged with violating securities laws. Their crime was the illegal use of confidential insider information to trade stocks for their own enrichment.

Business sadly, is not alone in lack of ethics. Men and women in positions of high public trust, to whom we ought to be able to look for scrupulous propriety, have betrayed our confidence. To just set forth a sampling, we have had the following in the past months:

• Large numbers of lawyers and judges convicted in Chicago in bribery and fixing of traffic and drunk driving cases;
• Former California Assemblyman Bruce Young convicted of felonies committed while in office;
• Former National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane admits helping draft an "inaccurate" (read misleading) chronology of the Iran arms affair to protect President Reagan from political damage;
• Lt. Col. Oliver North and former National Security Advisor John Poindexter accursed of illegal actions in connection with the Iran-contras scandal - in essence deliberately breaking the laws they had sworn to uphold; and
• Lyn Nofziger, former White House political director, and Michael Deaver, former deputy White House Chief of Staff, under Ronald Reagan have both been charged and are being investigated for violations of the Ethics in Government Act.

These are capable, educated and successful individuals, and all were in positions of public trust. All of their cases involved moral and ethical transgressions equally as great as any of the laws they broke.

The question comes to mind, "Doesn't anyone know right from wrong anymore?" Have we, as a people, lost our moral compass?

It doesn't really do any good to teach ethics and morals at the college and graduate level. That is a function of religious training, inculcation of family values and responsible upbringing while the child is young. I can't believe that these white collar crooks didn't know right from wrong. Boesky, Siegel, and Levine surely must have known it; they were short on scruples, not brains.

But, apparently, for them the test was not whether it was ethical or legal, but "Will I get caught?"

They voluntarily paid millions in penalties and fines ($100 million for Boesky, $12 million for Levine, and over $9 million for Siegel), so how could it have been merely greed when they already had that kind of money? More likely it's attributable to a lack of self-discipline and a breakdown of ethical and moral principles as much as the love for more money. It seemed too easy to pass up in the absence of any inward restraints of conscience.

So in this 20th century of ours, while the headlines are heralding big scientific breakthroughs that could lead to major progress in medicine, computers, communications and a range of other fields, we are no more advanced in our moral and ethical behavior than we were a thousand years ago (or when man first invented the wheel).

I happen to have closely followed the Wall Street scandal and am appalled at what transpired.

It's hard to understand the rationale (if they ever had one) of people like Ivan Boesky and Martin Siegel. They were blessed with all the trappings of success by their legitimate efforts; and, yet, ultimately, sealed their doom by repeated illegal use of inside information. Why did they do it?

Does the seductive allure of more wealth and power fuel ever-increasing expectations and desires, and erode moral character in the process? Is this the inevitable consequence of our consumerist society?

With the insider trading laws - as with so many other laws - there are plenty of gray areas. You know why? Because as soon as any precise guidelines are spelled out, the lawyers get to work to find that fine line which is on the right side of the law. Attorneys are specifically trained and well paid to do just that.

Interpreting laws or resolving a legal point is often a matter of nit-picking semantics (at which lawyers excel), while the more critical moral issues involved are neglected.

Speaking of nit-picking, recently I came across a case which epitomized it and where mindless legality caused an ad absurdum result. A lone pregnant woman driving in the carpool lane up the freeway ramp actually convinced a municipal court judge that her fetus counted as a passenger, and the judge dismissed the highway patrol citation. This certainly was a stunning, if laughable, example of carrying the letter of the law to an unintended result.

I hope the next time this lady goes to the theater they charge her for two tickets!

When one begins to look for loopholes, the whole purpose of the law can be subverted.

Our system of jurisprudence is made up of flexible and evolving fine lines in determining whether it's legal or not legal. The difference between legal and illegal is so blurred and obscure in some instances that it often leads to improper behavior when the moral implications are ignored and the focus is solely on the legal issues.

For example, it's acceptable for the president and chief executives of a public corporation being sought in a takeover to be hastily awarded by their corporation "golden parachutes" which guarantee them severance pay (in such a takeover) of many times their annual salary. Or, the entity pursuing the takeover may offer "sweetheart" contracts to such executives in an effort to woo them over and influence the vote.

What is more seductive in blinding executives charged with protecting the interests of their public shareholders than large sums of money thrown at them - all within the letter of the law? Where do you draw the fine line between a 'bribe' and fair compensation?

There definitely is a conflict of interest in such situations between the interests of such executives and that of their shareholders, but it's quite legal to have such an arrangement.

Legal, perhaps, but how right is it? Or does rectitude not rank very high in the value system of a growing number of executives?

We may need the services of legal counsel to keep us on the safe side of the law, but our own gut feeling tells us (or should tell us) when we are acting improperly.

So, inch by inch, we move from the right side of the law to barely over the fine line - because morally and ethically, there is not much difference. When the sole objective is to 'stay within the law', then little attention is paid to such questions as what's fair, what's right, and where lies justice.

Lamentably, many young, brilliant people ruined their careers in the Wall Street scandals. Ten recent graduates of Harvard, Colombia, Stanford and Wharton law schools and business schools are among the convicted felons, with their blossoming careers in ruins and their personal lives in total disarray. They seemingly had everything going for them except moral fiber, and that shortcoming led them down the path to disaster.

A recent poll of business school students reveals that scandals had no deterrent effect on them. In fact, the survey indicates that while most students condemned Mr. Boesky as a violator of insider trading laws who got carried away by greed and deserved to be punished for his misdeeds, 44 percent of the same students admitted they would buy stock on an inside tip that a company was going to be acquired.

What a sad commentary on our "best and brightest!" They have learned the wrong lessons well.

What profits a man to gain a BMW and lose his soul in the process?