“What happened next was even stranger. To succeed O’Neill, Bush turned to another industrialist with no Wall Street credentials, railroad executive John Snow. Snow is also a leader of the Business Roundtable who in the recent past has expressed public doubts about the need for a big economic stimulus.
Snow is an unfortunate symbol. As head of CSX, he enjoyed a sweetheart stock deal of the kind coming under Securities and Exchange Commission scrutiny. In 1996, CSX lent Snow $25.4 million to buy stock. Snow put up $7 million of his own money as a down payment. When CSX stock later tanked, the company generously forgave the loan and returned Snow’s $7 million down payment — not exactly a deal available to the average unlucky shareholder. What a perfect nominee for the Enron era. Ironically, Snow supervised a recent Conference Board report on corporate governance.”
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