Posted on 01/11/2002 8:14:33 AM PST by 1 FELLOW FREEPER
All this hullabaloo about an Enron scandal in the Bush White House has got to be the DUMBEST thing I have read in my 47 years on earth. I am an investor in the stock market who reads and watches every worthwhils bit of information every day on the market. I am here to tell you that not one reputable Wall Street analyst was aware of Enron's real troubles.It is at least ostensible that Enron "cooked the books", and now the corporate accountants have admitted to shredding many documents. Now, if not one person on Wall Street knew anything , how in the name of God was President Bush expected to know anything about this?
Lieberman is also investigating a company (Enron) that contributed to his OWN campaign. He should recuse himself just as Ashcroft did.
From a poster on a financial forum:
ANDERSON, ETC.
Just speculation, but I think it will become public knowledge that:
-- off balance sheet transactions are common
-- they have been set up to hide debt and maximize income and minimize expense on the PUBLIC financials
-- the consulting wings of the Big 10 accounting firms DESIGN the vehicles in ways that enable the auditing wings to IGNORE the off-balance sheet transactions
-- the big fees paid to the consulting wings are the equivalent of "silence money"
-- reform in accounting standards etc has been slow because the auditing firms are benefitting too much from the present fraudulent arrangements
-- complicity in this extends to major international banks who step up to the plate to fund these deals, in exchange for HUGE returns
-- large political contributions of the firms in question buy them immunity from regulatory oversight
In principle, I don't think there is anything all that NEW about what is going on. But the pervasiveness is still yet to be understood. Maybe it will not, however, because there are a lot of people with investments in the continuation of the status quo.
My response:
Fine. So loopholes exist and have for a long time. As you said this is nothing new. Why waste bandwidth with nonnews? If anyone can contribute real news, it would be insight into the process by which ENE was downgraded to junk. ENE was still profitable and operating as an important trader before they were downgraded. Who decided to put them out of business? Ratings friends of Gray Davis?
I do not know of any business where the players are as pure as newly fallen snow so I can't join a rag on Ken Lay this and Ken Lay that. But if I was Ken Lay's and ENE's enemy, I would analyze where the weak points are. One weakness I would note would be a short loan position with insufficient cash. Then I would determine the conditions by which those loans could be called sooner. I would also assess ENE's financial backing such as J.P. Morgan Chase to understand whether they were in a position to rescue ENE from the loan calls.
I believe Ken Lay and ENE were targeted because Ken Lay (like the Vichy in WWII France) would side with whoever was in power at the time and because he participated in the California energy squeeze. He called the White House for help when he saw it coming and they turned him down, not wanting to get involved in a scandal.
There are real victims from all this, but I don't think Ken Lay and ENE are the culprits. There are others behind the scenes that engineered this tragedy.
Sure, it's to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. If they are recusing themselves now, did they look the other way before all of this mess too? There was legislation legislation favorable to Enron passed that lead to the company being able to freeze the 401k's of their employees. What else was done?
Sure the administration is saying they did not intervene at the end of the company's existance, but then it was too late. Seems that their political connections on both sides helped them to create an enviroment where it was much easier to 'cook the books' and do whatever other unethical practices they wished, free from scrutiny.
I am waiting for them to suggest the government bail out the little people, oh and while they are at it, they will bail out the creditors (NY banks) who lost their money.
Exactly. The left is on a fishing expedition, desperate to topple Bush's raings. They know if a re-election were held today, he'd be re-elected by a landslide.
So funny -- are the dims stretching their imaginations or what?
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