The Grinch hated compliance. He scoffed at earnings season!
Now, please don't ask why. No one quite knows the reason.
It could be he knew not between wrong or right.
It could be, perhaps, he thought his wallet too light.
But we think the most likely reason of all
May have been that his conscience was two sizes too small.

But,
Whatever the reason,
His conscience or wallet,
He stood there over Wall Street, ignoring the YOUs
Staring down from his boardroom with a sour, Grinchy frown
At the warm lighted cubicles some twenty floors down.
For he knew every YOU down in YOU-ville beneath
Was busy now, working hard for his savings to keep.

" They're hanging their hopes in our stock!" he snarled with a sneer.
" Tomorrow earnings are due! It's practically here!"
Then he growled, with his grinch fingers nervously drumming,
" I MUST find a way to keep the SEC from coming!"
For, tomorrow, he knew..

... All the YOU employees
Would wake up bright and early. They'd rush to their desks!
And then! Oh, the work! Oh, the work! Work! Work! Work!
That's one thing he counted on - other people's work! The WORK! WORK! WORK! WORK!

Then the YOUs, the young and the old, would look to Wall Street.
And they'd invest! And they'd invest!
And they'd INVEST! VEST! VEST! VEST!
They'd follow stock analysts so their savings would increase.
This attracted the Grinch, for he knew he could feast!

And THEN
They'd do something he liked most of all!
Every YOU down in YOU-ville, investors big and small,
Would watch cable news networks, and as gains were appearing.
They'd stand hand-in-hand. And the YOUs would start cheering!

They'd cheer! And they'd cheer!
AND they'd CHEER! CHEER! CHEER! CHEER!
And the more the Grinch thought of the shareholders cheering,
The more the Grinch thought, "I'll change our accounting engineering!
" We've been cheating for years. Why should we stop now!
" I must stop the SEC from coming!
... But HOW?"

Then he got an idea!
An awful idea!
THE GRINCH
GOT A WONDERFUL, AWFUL IDEA!

" I know just what to do!" The Grinch Laughed in his throat.
And he called his accountant, grabbed his pen and white out.
And he chuckled, and clucked, "What a great XEROX trick!
" With Andersen and white out, these books will be slick!"

" All I need is an scapegoat..."
The Grinch looked around.
But since scapegoats are scarce, there was none to be found.
Did that stop the old Grinch...?
No! The Grinch simply said,
" If I can't find a scapegoat, I'll use Andersen instead!"
So he called his IT guy who found each email thread
And erased his hard drive - every last trace from its head.

THEN
He loaded his documents
In the shredders by the fax
And cajoled all his cohorts:
" Do the same - to the max!"

Then the Grinch said, "Hurry up!"
As the share price started down
And the unsuspecting YOUs
Were still working like hounds.

All their computers were whirring as his shreds filled the air.
All the YOUs were all dreaming sweet dreams of big shares
Why should YOU be concerned how this company would fare?
" This is stock number one!" The sour Grinch hissed.
" Things have never been better. Buy it NOW! Don't desist!"

Then he readied his parachute, gold for the Grinch.
As with most CEOs, no problem - a cinch.
He avoided detection, with regulators too few.
Then he chuckled to himself, "If the employees only knew!"
Where the little YOU stocks were all snug in a row.
Their 401Ks, he grinned, are the first things to go!

Then he slithered and slunk, for the time would be soon
Like those at WorldCom, Tyco, and some mutual funds knew.
Accounting chicanery, illegal trades, missing funds
Would leave all the YOUs with nothing but crumbs!
The Grinch stuffed his bags, to skip town and run,
He bought land in Boca like Scott Sullivan.

With his forged financials ready to roll
and bankers and analysts all in a tow
The Grinch grabbed his main man, Jeffrey Skilling
And he said with a smirk, "Let's go make a killing!"
But his plan was stopped short by a small, little YOU,
Employee Sheryl Watkins, no more than forty-two.

The Grinch had been caught by this little YOU worker
Who’d looked at the books – the sums failed to convince to her.
She stared at the Grinch and said, "Mr. Lay, why,
" Why can't I make the numbers add up, as hard as I try?"

But you know, that old Grinch was so smart and so slick
He thought up a lie, and he thought it up quick!
" Why, my sweet little worker," the sour CEO said,
" You must be mistaken, perhaps you've misread?
" So I'm taking our books to my accounting firm, dear.
" We'll clean those books there. Then I'll bring them back here."

And his fib fooled this little YOU for not very long.
And she filed a complaint against something very wrong.
This started a trail of mounting misdeeds
And in swooped the Feds and the hapless SEC
And before all the YOUs had any idea what to do,
$500 billion had vanished, and shareholders got screwed!

Every YOU down in YOU-ville, investors and staff,
Was cringing and jeering! "How come we get the shaft?"
All the hard work, the toiling, the saving.
In VAIN!
Somehow or other, in vain just the same!

They all wanted blood, someone to blame.
Fastow, Skilling, just give us the names!
And the Grinch, he stood puzzling: "How could it be so?
" It's not my fault. I was just the CEO."

The fall brought fanfare; "SCANDAL" - the headline in every rag!
Employees and shareholders left holding the bag.
And SEC Chairman Pitt puzzled 'till his puzzler was sore.
Then he thought of something he hadn't before!
" Maybe companies," he thought, "should be watched a bit more.
" But all that accounting stuff can be such a bore!
" Oh, is that chocolate pudding? Yes, I'd like a bit more."

And what happened then...?
Well...in YOU-ville they say
That the Grinch's net worth
Grew three sizes that day!
Fraud and deceit became tools of the trade
From Bernie and Dennis to the New York Stock Exchange.
And how many execs have been indicted or charged?
Too many to fit on just one deck of cards.

The average investor was left out in the lurch
As banks and analysts wrote misleading research
But things they are changing, says the SEC.
Grubman, Blodgett, CSFB,
Morgan, Stanley and the list just goes on
They've paid millions in fines, but they've done nothing wrong!
And of course Martha's innocent; Frank surely didn't know,
That deleting those emails was in fact a no-no.

And the Grinch, himself? He sits out of sight
Dodging lawsuits and indictments, sad is his plight.
" We're bankrupt, we're poor," his little YOU wife bemoans,
" How ever will we manage with only four luxury homes?"

And we ourselves sit idly back
Making satirical novelties of this moneyed riff-raff.
It's all so absurd, frustrating and sad
To see the best and brightest go so frighteningly bad.
One thing you might do to bring you some joy,
Is distribute this ruse to all the YOUs girls and boys.
And just one more thing as we wish best regards:
Come check out our site and get some of our cards!

© The Stacked Deck, LLC