Editors note: The author submitted this just days before he lost his job. What is ironic about this "rant," as Bruman puts it, is that it was written seven years ago. Do we never learn?

Recent months have brought disturbing news about the U.S. economy, the stock market, and business leadership in general. While some people try to blame it on an apparent moral decay on the part of our financial watchdogs and business leaders, I am here to say it’s not all their fault.

Yes, they ended up robbing from Peter to pay Paul, and yes they had to endorse what some people may call "creative" accounting practices to make the numbers all come out right. We would be unfair however, if we blame it on a lack of moral character, ethics, or greed. Our leaders have merely followed the same courses of action that seemed to work in the past, and what they were taught in many of our graduate business schools.

I will not attempt to detail all that was done in each of the Enron, World-com, QUEST cases, or any of the other past or emerging financial crises we’ve all witnessed these past few months. I will attempt, however, to draw your attention to some basic similarities that should point us toward some things we were warned about many decades ago by (of all people) Dr. W. Edwards Deming.

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