Friday, October 14, 2011

Email to Gretchen Morgenson

Re: Reckless Endangerment and your ECOA talk

Dear Ms. Morgenson,

After sending you my previous email, I read Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon.  That email (which you may find at http://robertshattuck.blogspot.com/2011/09/ecoa-featured-speakers.html) was sent in connection with your featured presentation at the Ethics & Compliance Officer Association conference in September and concerned entity level liability versus officer and employee individual liability as a means to deter corporate wrongdoing.

In Reckless Endangerment and in your Charlie Rose interview
(http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11619), you indicate you are greatly bothered by the paucity of individual liability for the likes of Jim Johnson, Franklin Raines, Angelo Mozilo and others, whose "outsized ambition, greed and corruption led to economic armageddon."

I previously informed you that I have initiated this project (http://robertshattuck.blogspot.com/2011/06/statement-of-project.html) to investigate the perspectives, views, analyses, and information that interested parties such as lawmakers, judges, regulators, state attorneys general, criminal prosecutors, corporate management, ethics and compliance officers, various academics, plaintiffs' lawyers, and consumer protection organizations have concerning the subject of entity level liability versus officer and employee individual liability as a means to deter corporate wrongdoing.

My impression is that you believe there needs to be more officer and employee individual liability for purposes of trying to deter corporate wrongdoing.

Besides the email I sent to you, I sent individualized emails to many of the other conference speakers for whose topics it seemed to me that the issue of entity level liability versus officer and employee liability had relevance. (You may find those emails at http://robertshattuck.blogspot.com/2011/09/other-ecoa-2011-conference-speakers.html ).

I was not present at the ECOA conference to hear your talk and would be very interested to learn what you said. I hope you said there needed to be more officer and employee individual liability.

Thank you.

Sincerely,
Rob Shattuck

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