It Takes a CEO: It's Time to Lead with Integrity

According to Hindery, CEOs are uniquely positioned to save the world from the corrosive effects of airline deregulation, the flight of jobs to China, Wal-Mart's rapaciousness and the lack of national health insurance. Hindery, AT&T Broadband's former CEO and former president of TCI cable (and current recreational race car driver), shows how, in isolated instances, CEOs have solved one of the aforementioned difficulties, specifically noting how Costco's CEO, Jim Sinegal, in contrast to Wal-Mart's leadership, manages to pays the company's employees a living wage, and how discount carrier JetBlue has fostered financial success and both employee and customer satisfaction by upending the traditional airline service model. These cases give Hindery hope that future generations of CEOs will launch ""the equivalent of a Marshall Plan to help rescue the U.S. economy and its middle class."" Hindery spends most of his time exposing and condemning egregious executive behavior, corporate shenanigans, the perils of offshore outsourcing, the prevalence of gross-out reality television and how, at the end of the earnings period, the employee everyman suffers. His aims are admirable and his perspective is unique, but it's a tough sell that CEOs, not generally seen as champions of the middle class, will be the ones who remedy the societal ills Hindery has in his crosshairs.