Every week it’s another company, another financial problem, another screw up from the folks up top. And the results are frightening.

Wall Street took a 390-point wild ride straight down Friday, leading the Dow Jones to its lowest closing in nearly four years. More of the same could be on tap today.

At the heart of the problem is shady accounting scandals at once-esteemed firms such as WorldCom and Enron - now names synonymous with the worst of business - that have shaken the confidence of already Sept. 11-shaken investors.

WorldCom, which hid $1.2 billion in losses, has plummeted toward bankruptcy and who knows what has happened to Enron, and the list of business scandals keeps growing.

In the meantime, millions of customers, employees and investors are struggling to figure out what to do to recover from the effects of these financial shenanigans.

If President Bush’s words to Wall Street taught us anything, it was that actions speak louder than words.

As the president spoke, the stock market simultaneously stumbled and fell - hard.

A speech meant to bolster investors’ confidence seemed to do exactly the opposite.

We wonder what the effect would have been if the president had taken sweeping actions against the problems plaguing business, rather than talking about them.

There are laws to punish those who lie, cheat and steal, but it would appear to be just a slap on the wrist when dealing with companies such as Enron and WorldCom.

The president should be supporting movements for stricter penalties against corporate fraud to let Wall Street know it doesn’t have a place in society, especially as our economy continues to decline.

At the same time, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the government agency responsible for these types of business infractions, needs the resources to keep rogue company executives in check.

Fraud and dishonesty on the high corporate-level has always been around, but when the economy was good, no one wanted to rock the boat.

Now people are starting to see big business in all its falling glory. Whatever actions the commission should have taken years earlier were missed, and now those who trusted the economic good-times will be left picking up the pieces.

So tighten your seat belts and hold on, this won’t be the last scam - and that means the rollercoaster ride on Wall Street is far from over.

And until the government takes reasonable actions to curb misconduct, more companies will fall under the spell of corporate greed and the public will be left holding the bag.

If the U.S. economy is ever to recover, businesses must not only look stable, but actually function, complete with consumer and investor confidence in whatever it may be that they are spending their hard-earned dollars on.