If Wal-Mart was serious about diversity, it would hire independent auditors, stop refusing to disclose its diversity goals, and finally release the hard data about what Wal-Mart pays its women and minority workers.

Federal regulators need to heed Chairman Greenspan's warning and realize that a Wal-Mart bank would pose serious and grave threat to consumers, community banks and the economic health of this nation.

Rather than address the serious issues of unaffordable health care, poverty wages, crime, and sprawl, Wal-Mart?s latest and greatest public relations stunt is to try to rebuild a fraction of the very communities and small business it has helped destroy.

Wal-Mart's future in 2006 will not look any brighter unless Lee Scott realizes that Wal-Mart must change into a more responsible employer.

It is a diversionary tactic. Wal-Mart understands that they have a growing public relations disaster on their hands. American people are looking at a company with $10 billion in profit and $285 billion in sales that makes excuse after excuse about why it can't provide a living wage and health care to its workers.

Stuck in the midst of a public relations quagmire that no other company faces, Wal-Mart realizes that it must change its faltering public image to ensure its future success.