Keith H. Hammonds (khammonds@fastcompany.com) is a Fast Company senior editor based in New York.
Meet Emily Levine
Emily Levine is equal parts philosopher and comic. In her celebrated career, Levine has been part of an improv comedy group, written for television sitcoms, done stand-up comedy, and wrote and performed an Emmy-winning series of commercial satire segments for television. She has earned the greatest praise for her one-woman shows, "Myself, Myself, I'll Do It Myself," and, last month, "Common cen$e." According to the executive producers of The Sopranos, "If Einstein came back as a stand-up comic, he'd be Emily Levine."
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury: I rise before you in defense of the damned.
Let's consider this case on its merits. The prosecution has argued that my clients misstated earnings, overvalued their worth, overreached, overweened, and carried out the wholesale hijacking of their companies' assets -- motivated solely by greed. This we categorically deny. Greed was not the sole motivation. Yes, these CEOs wanted more money, bigger cars, multiple mansions, fatter bank accounts, limitless perks, and free stock options -- for starters. But they sought those baubles for a reason that was far more elemental than greed. The basis for my clients' actions was, in fact, nothing less than the laws of physics. My clients, big men all, were merely keeping faith with the dictates of an even larger force: the universe.
According to cosmologists, the universe began as a tiny dot that exploded suddenly and that has been expanding -- and will continue to expand -- for billions and billions of years. I ask the 12 of you seated in the jury box to put yourselves in the shoes of a CEO -- say, Jack Welch. You come face-to-face with this vision of limitless expansion for the first time, and what do you see? You see a business plan! As God created the universe, so Jack Welch created the modern corporation. And he looked and saw that it was without boundaries: There was no border between him and his own corporate ends. Nothing tied him down -- no restrictions, no regulations, no marriage vows. There was nothing between him and the object of desire. All growth, all the time, 24-7-365.
And where Jack Welch led, others soon followed. "No limits," crowed Showtime. "No boundaries," chimed Ford. Not mere sloganizing but a new faith, based on a new understanding of the cosmos. Of course CEOs don't want to be transparent -- 90% of the matter in the universe can't be seen. Sure CEOs inflated their earnings -- the universe went through an inflationary period too. It's still expanding. What are you going to do, put the universe in jail?
"But hold on a moment!" my good friend opposing counsel will no doubt protest. What about the law of gravity? How is it possible that CEOs followed the logic of the big bang but not the law of gravity? I can answer that question in two words: quantum physics.
Before science made this quantum leap, a boundary was a straight line drawn down the middle of two things, like the line between "either" and "or." Either things were black, or they were white; either light was a wave, or it was a particle. But in the quantum world, light manifests as both a wave and a particle.
And as in the quantum world, so in the corporate world, where, as quantum expert George Bush recently declared, "Things aren't exactly black-and-white when it comes to accounting procedures." If brokers talk up stocks that they themselves are dumping, well, it's because in the financial world, things aren't exactly right or wrong. They can be both: The stock is simply good and bad -- good for my clients, bad for you.
No, if a crime has been committed, it has been against these poor CEOs, men of business, men of science. As they stand before you now, empty shells of the giants they once were, I can only pray that there exists among you some shred of decency. And if indeed, as I suspect, there is . . . my clients would like to buy it.
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