October 9, 2001, TuesdayPosted on 07/12/2002 2:08:07 PM PDT by rdavis84
New ambassador to Saudi Arabia is another Bush/Carlyle Group crony.
October 9, 2001, Tuesday
By Jonathan Ashley, Eyes On American
Dallas attorney Robert Jordan was confirmed Wednesday by the United States Senate to serve as ambassador to Saudi Arabia.
Jordan has no diplomatic experience. However, his connections leave no doubt as to why he was named to the post. He defended George W. Bush in a probe of insider trading allegations in 1990. The allegations involved the sale by Bush of 60% of his Harken Energy Corp. stocks two months before a 25% drop in the stock's price. According to a 7 Sep 2000 article by the Associated Press, "At the time of the investigation, Bush's father was president of the United States and the SEC was run by one of his biggest political supporters, Richard Breeden. The SEC's then-general counsel, James R. Doty, was another staunch presidential supporter who as a private attorney was George W. Bush's lawyer when he purchased his share of the Texas Rangers baseball team."
This is not Jordan's only connection to the Bush family. Jordan is a corporate lawyer in the Dallas office of Houston-based Baker Botts. Baker Botts has an office in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The client list at Baker Botts includes "more than half of the Fortune 100 companies". The client list also includes The Carlyle Group. On the board of directors for Carlyle is former President George Herbert Walker Bush.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_01/0662.Bush.Saudi.htm
Well given this lie, I am not sure how credible this article is...
That official was not, as National Public Radio suggested Tuesday morning, then Republican SEC Chairman Richard Breeden (appointed by the elder President George Bush). It was SEC enforcement chief William McLucas, now a partner in one of Washington’s most prestigious law firms — and a Democrat. He recently produced the report that revealed the Enron scandal. McLucas told me, “I can see no reason” to replay his 1990 Bush inquiry.
I'd investigate the story further, but I only have 10 minutes before I head home for the weekend...it never fails that a story like this comes up right when I am ready to head home...***Sigh***. I will pick it back up on Monday.
| Month | Close | Volume |
|---|---|---|
| Feb 90 | 5.13 | 10,900 |
| Mar 90 | 4.75 | 28,100 |
| Apr 90 | 4.75 | 43,600 |
| May 90 | 4.38 | 48,000 |
| Jun 90 | 3.75 | 12,700 |
| Jul 90 | 3.50 | 16,900 |
| Aug 90 | 3.88 | 14,200 |
Check out the volume in April and May. Looks like a lot of people were dumping the stock. (But, of course, they all had to have inside information, too, right?)
Are you saying that the SEC Chief was NOT Breeden or only that he was not the one who did the detail work?
You seem to be minimizing that Breeden was the head, and maximizing that the investigation was done by someone lower down, that worked for him, correct?
And a LARGE portion of Carlyle at one time, possibly still.
Bush denied any wrongdoing, but the allegations led to an SEC investigation. Commission experts looked into three questions: One, did Bush know in advance that Harken was going to post an abnormally large loss in August, 1990? Two, did Bush sell the stock with the intent of getting out while the getting was good? And three, did Harken's loss announcement lead to a stock downturn that hurt ordinary investors who had no inside knowledge of the company's workings?
According to several internal SEC memos written in 1991 and 1992 — they are available on the website of the public-interest group the Center for Public Integrity — investigators examined thousands of pages of documents given to them by Bush and Harken, interviewed several witnesses, and met with lawyers for Bush and the company (Bush waived attorney-client privilege to allow the SEC to interview the lawyers). On the first question, whether Bush knew in advance about the losses, the SEC investigators found that "the evidence establishes that Bush was not aware of the majority of the items that comprised the loss Harken announced on August 20." Most of that loss, according to the SEC, resulted from write-downs and expenses that occurred after Bush sold his stock — events that he did not know were coming. In addition, the investigators found that Bush played a "relatively limited role in Harken management." In that role, he usually did not receive what were called the Weekly Flash Reports on the company's financial condition; those reports were given only to the board of directors' executive committee. The result, according to an SEC investigative memo, was that Bush was not particularly up to date on the company's finances:
The staff's investigation indicates that, at most, Bush was aware that Harken was forecasted to lose approximately $4.2 million in the second quarter. [The actual loss eventually turned out to be more than five times that] Harken's financial reporting was on about a 45-day delay, so that in mid-June the numbers reflecting Harken's actual results in April would be available. Consequently, by June 22 (the date when Bush sold) no actual revenue or loss information was available for the second two months of the quarter ended June 30. Bush, however, did see the Weekly Flash Report for the week ended May 31, 1990, which reflected a projected net loss for April of $1,875,00, a loss for May of $2,029,000, and a loss for June of $327,000 (for a total of $4,231,000)....Flash reports for the first two weeks of June, which would have been in existence prior to June 22, were only circulated to the members of the Harken executive committee (of which Bush was not a member).
On the second question, whether Bush sold the stock deliberately to avoid losing money before bad news was made public, the SEC found that Bush made the sale after being contacted by a stockbroker who had an institutional client who wanted to buy a large block of Harken stock. When Bush decided to sell, he checked with Harken's in-house counsel, as well as the company's chairman, plus another director, and, finally, the company's outside counsel, to see whether there were any reasons the sale could not go through. No one raised any objections. "In light of the facts uncovered, it would be difficult to establish that, even assuming Bush possessed material nonpublic information, he acted with scienter or intent to defraud," the SEC concluded.
On the third question, whether the news of Harken's unexpectedly large loss hurt the company's investors, the SEC examined Harken's share price just before and just after news of the loss was made public. The announcement came at 9:34 A.M. on August 20, 1990. When the market opened that morning, according to the SEC, Harken's stock was selling at $3 per share. It stayed at that level until after noon, when it began a slow slide to $2.375 per share. The next day, however, it rebounded to $3 per share. If the loss announcement had been a bombshell, SEC investigators reasoned, the stock would most likely have fallen immediately and stayed down. "The conclusion of the Office of Economic Analysis is that, because the price of Harken did not immediately react to the earnings announcement and there is no news that explains Harken's return to its pre-announcement price of $3 on August 21, 1990, the earnings announcement did not provide investors with new material information," the SEC said. Furthermore, even though Harken stock moved down for the rest of 1990, it recovered its value — and more — the next year, when it hit $8 a share.
The stock traded above the $4 sale price as early as Jan 1991 on it's daily close. It reached daily highs of over $16 a share by Aug. 1991. The stock had daily highs of up to $10 in the months of 1990 following the sale..... this is much ado about nothing as the SEC basically said.
Some of us have an affinity for complete sentences.
In any case, I want to know precisely what you are alleging. Don't let poorly-sourced articles from near-defunct internet magazines do your heavy lifting for you.
And now ---- "If Washington's revolving door brought Republicans to Carlyle during the Clinton presidency, now the firm is preparing for an onslaught of Democrats. The day these interviews took place at Carlyle's Washington office, Gene Sperling, one of the Clinton administration's top economic advisers, was in for a job interview."
Same Trough for the pigs.
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