Maybe the U.S. Should Be Run Like a Business. Oh wait...

One of the major zombie lies that still haunts our politics, is that what this country really needs are the Masters of the Universe in the private sector running the country.

Thankfully, by soundly rejecting that notion on Election Day, our nation dodged a bullet like this--for the time being:

(Reuters) - When Hewlett Packard acquired Autonomy last year for $11.1 billion, some 15 different financial, legal and accounting firms were involved in the transaction -- and none raised a flag about what HP said Tuesday was a major accounting fraud.

HP stunned Wall Street with the allegations about its British software unit and took an $8.8 billion writedown, the latest in a string of reversals for the storied company.

Meg Whitman, the billionaire CEO who acquired this hollow company and relied on bad intelligence, recently tried to acquire the governorship of my state by waging the most expensive campaign for a non-presidential election, at that time. She ran on her business judgement.

Like Romney, she insisted that her expertise in the private sector uniquely qualified her to radically makeover how government services are managed and delivered.

Even though we saw this movie--and watched it end badly--when the nation was run by an MBA President, for some reason half the country continues to believe that the ways of Wall Street are the best practices to save Main Street.

They believe governments are plagued by too many decisions being made by committee and you need a strong, kick-ass, take-no-prisoners authoritarian who likes firing people to shake things up.

But apparently people who believe in the myth of strongmen taking responsibility, ignore what actually happens when deals like this go very badly: lots of people make money, but nobody takes responsibility.

Banking advisers on both sides of the deal were paid $68.8 million, according to data from Thomson Reuters/Freeman Consulting.[...]

While regulators in the United States and the United Kingdom, as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, are likely to spend many months if not years investigating what happened, legal experts said on Tuesday that it wasn't clear if any of the advisers would ultimately be held liable.

This terrible deal and how it came to be, perfectly illustrates that neither Wall Street nor the people who believe in their mythos have learned anything since the global economic crash only a few years ago.

The most controversial banker involved in the HP-Autonomy deal, Frank Quattrone of Qatalyst, represented Autonomy and played a key role in getting HP to pay a high price.[...]

His time at the top of Silicon Valley was curtailed by charges that he blocked an investigation into IPO kickbacks. After two trials failed to resolve his case, he ultimately reached a deal with prosecutors.

His return to the Silicon Valley M&A scene has impressed many in the tech world.

"His reputation is at an all-time high right now," said Dan Scheinman, the former head of mergers and acquisitions at Cisco who has worked with Quattrone on several deals.

Analysts almost uniformly deemed the $11.1 billion he got HP to pay for Autonomy as overly rich -- a compliment to him at the time, but possibly a hollow success if HP's allegations prove true.

Wall Street still gleefully rewards greed, incompetence, finger pointing and no accountability. This is the culture and these are the values that half the country still believe need to be brought to Washington to ensure that the nation flourishes.

Fighting and defeating this zombie lie is a long term project, but a worthy and necessary one.