A Time for Outrage

The Washington Post ^ | Richard Cohen

[GeneD]

Bush could scream bloody murder. He could tell the Enron executives to put that $1.1 billion in stock sales into a pool for Enron employees who now have nothing. He could tell Kenneth Lay, the chairman and chief executive, to give back the more than $30 million he got in stock sales. He could tick off the names of each and every executive and then -- like Ronald Reagan at the Berlin wall shouting, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" -- he could say, "Mr. Lay, Give back the money."

[GeneD]

Sorry, I forgot to post the date of publication: today, January 15.

[Restorer]

I'm unfamiliar with Mr. Cohen. Do you know what his position was on the propriety of Mr. Clinton's actions in the Oral Office? Or were those actions not an outrage, even if they were legal? (Which they weren't.)

[concerned about politics]

Bush wouldn't do it, but the article is so true. This is a waste of taxpayer dollars.
They're only going to find democrat fingerprints with this investigation, and it will fade off into the sunset with millions of dollars wasted.
The democrats will refuse to send themselves to prison, the CEO's will blame the accounting firm, but will have no proof of wrong doing because Arther Anderson pulled a Hillary.

[day10]

Cohen is a complete, utter, clueless, "the sky is a different color in his world" liberal. The fact that drivel is published in any media proves the liberal bias.

[MJY1288]

As much as I would like to see a better end to this story, I think you have it pegged

[MJY1288]

The Accounting firm is already blaming an employee,

[alloysteel]

Be careful of taking advice from people who are not of your political persuasion. This is not to totally ignore the advice either, as it is quite useful to know what your opponents expect of you, as they craftily lay out deadfalls and landmines they believe you too ignorant to avoid. Danged Democrats never did know how to fight a serious threat, comes of dodging military duty, or performing it badly when called upon in a crisis.

[Captainpaintball]

Shut up, Cohen! Rush rendered you and your column obsolete about eight hours ago!

You lose. Please try again.

[Chi-townChief]

Mr. Cohen has had his head far up his liberal butt for as long as I can recall.

[bagman]

I used to read the Washington Post every day (it's a good way to watch Washington trial balloons being floated and shot down), and, at that time, Cohen had a column on the first page of the second (Metro) section - a column for the up-and-coming, so to speak.

It was back in the days of the IRA debate, and Cohen "proved" that the availability of IRAs should be restricted by citing the case of a couple of DINKs (double income, no kids) who didn't need to put money into an IRA. By his logic if that couple didn't need to use an IRA, then nobody needed an IRA. Seriously, folks, I am summarizing his argument fairly. (I think that this column ran some time before May, 1983, when I moved out of Washington ComPost territory),

To be fair to him, I think that he did eventually find Clinton to be distasteful.

[Cicero]

It's not the job of the President of the United States to interfere with business corporations, instruct them what to do, or scream at people. There is a process to handle these matters. It's called "the law."

[scotiamor]

Its interesting that the outrage that Cohen expresses is that employees of Enron, with 401K funds, did not have the chance to sell the stock during its fall. Now, the employees certainly might have more "inside" knowledge than the average stock investor. So why would it be "fair" if all enron employees could have sold their shares at say $70 when word first spread. Employees would have sold shares to whom? To unsuspecting outside investors. So they would be the ones losing $69/share because they didn't have all the information. The scandal here is how accounting rules let Enron book sales the way they did, and Arthur Andersen's failure to detect the hidden liabilities, etc..

[tgiles]

Correct, the proper solution is to find a law to prosecute the executives under, get their money back, give it to the creditors, and then the employees who were too stupid to diversify will end up with the same as the executives: zippo.

I'll bet 50 million Americans lost at least 50% of their retirement portfolio value in 2000-2001. Are they bitching for free handouts? No, they lived and learned.

[Sci Fi Guy]

"Mr. Lay, Give back the money

Why should he? Why assume Lay is a villain? According to Rush, if Lay had sold his stock at its peak, he would be a multi-billionaire. The guy waited until it was worth less 1/30 of its peak value. (And he didn't take the severance payoff that his contract allowed.)

This bugs me because I know a company whose stock crashed to less than a dollar. In an effort to try and save the company, they offered top dollar(millions) to a first rate CEO. Why would any CEO(give up a high paying job and) try to save the company if we will treat them as criminals if they fail?

[meenie]

Arthur Anderson knew exactly where the hidden liabilities were and was not required to report them under present laws. The execs can probably be convicted of insider trading. The millions that the execs got away with is a pimple on an elephant's rear end compared to a forty billion bankruptcy.