Scandals at HP, Apple, Intel and Dell

We had HP company lawyers saying it was legal to obtain confidential information by pretending to be someone else; we’ve had Apple forging records of a board meeting; we’ve had innumerable cases of execs falsely filling in their stock option dates; we’ve had investigations into price fixing on DRAMs, SRAMs, flash memory and flat panels; now we have a lawsuit saying Intel paid nearly $250m a quarter to Dell in return for Dell not buying chips from AMD.

Yet we heard those solid corporate citizens in Davos telling us that Sarbanes-Oxley regulations were a terrible burden on their ability to be competitive. We need less regulation they argued. Trust us. Let us out to play.

It’s funny how these highly respectable-looking types can act in the most outrageously disreputable ways. Maybe there’s a law which tracks degrees of respectable-appearances against degrees of disreputable propensities.

Is it that the US high-tech industry is particularly crooked? Or is it that the US high-tech industry comes under tougher scrutiny than in the rest of the world? It’s almost certainly the latter. Look at the kick-backs lavished about by our own dear BAe Systems, conveniently excused from investigation by a compliant Attorney-General.

The truth probably is that most industrialists, like most individuals, will get away with what they can. While there are scrupulously honest individuals in this world, these guys don’t often get to the top in industry. Or in politics.

Which is why industrialists and politicians need a very close watch kept on them.

Sometimes scrutiny has an excellent effect. I wondered why Dell suddenly decided to use AMD chips after being exclusively Intel for 20 years.

Now, it seems, it may have been the whiff of a lawsuit which got them to open up. And that’s good for free markets, free competition, free choice and freedom generally.

Don’t all Americans believe in all of those?

Or are there some in Santa Clara who don’t?