KENNETT, Mo. — When Doyle Privett and his fellow investment club members get together to pick a company's stock, one concern is never far from their minds: They want to be sure the company won't plunge into an abyss of financial scandal.
"It's one of the things we talk about," said Privett, an accountant in this small town near the Arkansas and Tennessee borders. "Has anybody heard anything? Do we know who runs this company? Have they had problems in the past? Have there been any accusations?"
A few blocks away, insurance agent and financial advisor Glenda Beach hears the refrain over and over from clients who want a safe place to nurture their hard-earned savings. Every day, another customer frets that "the bigwigs could take all my money and run off with it," she said.
Factory worker Ron Hicks can't figure out how his retirement account, tied to stock investments, evaporated in recent years. "Where did the money go?" he demands. "Who's got it? Can you tell me?.... It's got to be somewhere."
More than two years after Enron Corp. became an emblem of corporate fraud and trickery, opinion surveys show that throughout the nation the public's faith in the financial system remains shaken -- a distrust that undermines people's sense of financial security and helps fuel a hunger for leadership that will set things right.
This unease could prove a factor in the presidential election because it ties directly into voters' concerns about the economy in a year that has seen stagnant job growth and the stock market sinking again.
Democrats, led by presidential hopeful John Kerry, complain that major corporations have lost their civic moorings -- cheating stockholders, short-changing employees, shipping jobs overseas -- and they blast the Bush administration for being too cozy with rich executives.
Campaigning in Iowa in January, for example, Kerry promised to "break the grip" of corporate interests on government and "drive the forces of greed and privilege from the precincts and pinnacles of power."
For its part, the White House has worked vigorously to insulate itself from criticism, through anti-fraud enforcement, regulatory actions and statements of concern. Yet there are at least some signs that the scandals could take a political toll.
In January, a Wall Street Journal/NBC News Poll found that voters believed Democrats would be better than Republicans at "strengthening laws against corporate corruption" by a margin of 39% to 23% (with the rest mostly undecided).
