"More than ever, Americans do not trust business or the people who run it."

That from a Dec. 9 New York Times article that looks at three surveys conducted in 2005:

• In a Roper poll conducted from July 28 to Aug. 10, 72% of respondents felt that wrongdoing was widespread in industry, up from 66% the previous year. Only 2% checked off "very trustworthy" to describe the chief executives of very large companies, down from 3% last year. And only 9% said they had full trust in financial services institutions, down from 14% last year.
  
  
• Ninety percent of respondents to a Harris poll, conducted Nov. 8-13, said big companies had too much influence on government, up from 83% last year. Sixty-eight percent of the respondents said the news media were too powerful, while 43% said unions were too strong. About 35% felt even religious leaders had too much power.
  
  
• Recent surveys by the Pew Research Center show that a growing number of Americans believe that government is inefficient.

"Pollsters, researchers, even many corporate chiefs themselves say that business is under attack by a majority of the public, which believes that executives are bent on destroying the environment, cooking the books and lining their own pockets," writes Claudia Deutsch. "Even as corporate scandals like Tyco's recede, fresh complaints - over high energy costs and soaring oil company profits, planned layoffs in the auto industry, bribery and conflicts of interest in military contracting - fuel the antipathy."

Even institutional investors no longer give corporate executives the benefit of the doubt. "We're operating in a caveat emptor world, one in which you have to check everything that management tells you against what else you know and hear," said William Riegel, a managing director of TIAA-CREF, the huge teachers' pension fund that commissioned the Roper poll. 

Technology has given the angry voices a more public outlet. The blogosphere is rife with postings castigating big companies, citing everything from unfair labor practices to dangerous smokestack emissions.

And some politicians are picking up the antibusiness scent. Representative Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, recently introduced a bill to require shareholders to approve executive compensation and force companies to take back bonuses that were based on faulty accounting. 

One of the keenest targets is the group of high-paid executives running big business, writes Deutsch. "Every report of high-dollar executive compensation - Philip Purcell's $113 million payout to leave Morgan Stanley, James M. Kilts's $165 million for selling Gillette to Procter & Gamble - strengthens the feeling that business funnels money from the workers to the elite. The trial of Enron's former top executives, which begins in January, is likely to renew anger about the scandal that touched off this wave of distrust." 

Animosity toward executives as a class, not just the institutions they work for, seems to be rising to a new level. "Society has come to believe that the term 'crooked C.E.O.' is redundant," said Robert S. Miller, the chief executive of Delphi, the bankrupt auto parts company. 

Many executives, while acknowledging the public antipathy, adamantly dispute the criticism. They note that some companies were more helpful than government in the wake of the tsunami in Asia and the Gulf Coast hurricanes. They argue that they are disclosing more financial information, and have cracked down on unethical behavior. 

Companies are fighting back with their own public campaigns. Commercials for Wal-Mart show its employees lauding their benefits and career opportunities. The American Chemistry Council has earmarked $20 million for an education campaign to stress the role of chemicals in daily life. The Business Roundtable has stepped up its corporate ethics programs and just introduced what it calls Sea Change, a program to get big companies to pursue environmentally sound growth. 

Read the entire article at http://www.spinwatch.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2002