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Oracle counts on trader gullibility Market 'pros' fall for a line they’ve heard again and again, making lemonade out of one really sour earnings report. By Bill Fleckenstein This edition takes a peek at the dicey nature of today's market environment, in which rank speculation sometimes triumphs over fear. Recently, Oracle claimed such a victory when one of its skillfully timed news releases unleashed a wave of speculation among "professionals." No clairvoyance needed to guess that outcome. Of course, some people mistakenly attribute oracular powers to the individual currently installed as chairman of the Federal Reserve. Funny, how this "visionary"...

<p>Sacramento -- The Democratic chairman of a committee that probed the state's questionable Oracle Corp. contract and embarrassed Gov. Gray Davis was removed from his job Tuesday and replaced with a lawmaker who has been less hostile to the governor.</p>

<p>The Oracle computer software scandal claimed another casualty Friday when the Department of Information Technology bowed out of state government, closing its doors for the last time.</p> <p>The demise of the technology oversight body represents a rare -- if not unique -- case of the sun actually setting on a state department.</p>

<p>SACRAMENTO - Now that state lawmakers have wrapped up their two-month examination of the Oracle software deal, Attorney General Bill Lockyer is ramping up his criminal investigation of the scandal.</p> <p>Lawyers with the state Department of Justice have begun to set up meetings with key figures involved with the disputed contract, to pore over thousands of pages of testimony and to piece together evidence they have been gathering over the last few weeks.</p>

California legislative committee ends investigation of sleazy Oracle state database deal without formal report. A clip from the story at World Tech Tribune.com: What do you do with 2,500 pages worth of legal documents, testimony from 30 different witnesses and 60+ days worth of committee hearings on a sleazy deal with the second largest software company in the world that cost Californian taxpayers $95 million? If you’re the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, you chalk it all up to a breakdown in procedure and leave it at that...

<p>GOV. Gray Davis has escaped the worst possible outcome of the Oracle software hearings. No indisputable evidence of corruption has emerged.</p> <p>But he and his administration have been badly stained by their inability to offer a coherent explanation for the approval of a $123 million contract for database software, and by the lingering suspicion that political influence had much to do with it.</p>

SACRAMENTO--Assemblyman Dean Florez said Tuesday he is not worried that his scathing indictment of incompetence by officials of Gov. Gray Davis' administration in the Oracle computer scandal will bring retribution from the governor. A spokeswoman for the governor said Davis does not engage in "petty politics," such as refusing to sign bills by lawmakers who criticize him. But the episode left many people wondering how Florez, a Democrat from Shafter, will fare in Sacramento now that he has cemented a reputation as a maverick who doesn't hesitate to investigate and publicly criticize leaders of his own party. As the...

SACRAMENTO -- Politicians and their aides are convinced the state Capitol is crawling with FBI agents in the aftermath of the Oracle debacle and amid insinuations of policy for sale in the governor's office. Assembly Democrats were warned in a closed-door meeting last week to avoid any appearance of a link between fund raising and lawmaking, because "someone is sniffing around the building," one lawmaker said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The caucus's counsel reminded members that "even the implication" of a connection between a policy discussion and campaign fund raising could lead to serious legal trouble, the lawmaker said....

<p>State Finance Director Tim Gage may have provided legislators with the closest thing to an explanation in their quest to understand how on earth the Davis administration in just 22 days approved a $95 million contract, without competitive bidding, for Oracle Corp. software the state probably didn't need.</p>

Gary South, Gray Davis' Campaign Manager, has taken on the semblance of Tony Montana in the 1983 movie "Scarface." Angry, resentful, take no prisoners, a political mercenary with no other objective than to turn a rotten apple into Cinderella's chariot come November. "South the Mouth" is upset that the Davis campaign's recent commercial attacks on Simon have met with no response. How dare they, South must be thinking. After all it was South who said: "We've raised more money than God." "We've had a lot of crap poured on our heads in the last two years," South told the...

SACRAMENTO- A legislative committee investigating a potentially costly state computer contract has wrapped up its hearing with scathing criticism of the Davis administration's handling of the deal. "I think we got taken to the cleaners...," Assemblyman Dean Florez, D-Shafter, said Monday night as the Joint Legislative Audit Committee completed more than 110 hours of testimony. "Every agency head involved in this fiasco _ as well as the governor's policy adviser, cabinet secretary and director of e-government _ abdicated their duties to the detriment of taxpayers and to the benefit of the corporate interests." Republicans pressed for even more hearings on...

SACRAMENTO, Jun 18, 2002 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- A legislative committee wrapped up its hearing into a potentially costly state computer contract with scathing criticism of Gov. Gray Davis' administration for its handling of the deal. "I think we got taken to the cleaners," Democratic Assemblyman Dean Florez said Monday night as the Joint Legislative Audit Committee completed more than 110 hours of testimony. "Every agency head involved in this fiasco - as well as the governor's policy adviser, cabinet secretary and director of e-government - abdicated their duties to the detriment of taxpayers and to the benefit...

<p>SACRAMENTO (AP) - A legislative committee wrapped up its hearing into a potentially costly state computer contract with scathing criticism of Gov. Gray Davis' administration for its handling of the deal.</p> <p>Republicans pressed for more hearings on the $95 million, no-bid agreement with Oracle Corp., suggesting that the testimony had revealed corruption in state government.</p>

<p>SACRAMENTO - Issuing a blistering indictment of the Davis administration, the lawmaker leading the investigation into the Oracle deal concluded his inquiry Monday and blamed the failed contract on officials who bowed to political pressure.</p> <p>Florez, a Bakersfield Democrat who has presided over two months of hearings, recounted in extraordinary detail how a powerful lawmaker and advisers to Gov. Gray Davis pushed a controversial software contract that ``was at a standstill before Oracle began pulling strings.''</p>

Oracle has been in the news lately, as the investigation into a no-bid $95 million sale the company made to the State of California winds its way through the political process and, possibly, into the courts. The deal was supposed to save the state money, but it now appears that California has more software than it has employees to use it. And the savings the software was to bring the state may, in fact, be offset by the costs of fixing the problem. From where I sit, it looks like Oracle was all too willing to take advantage of state...

<p>SACRAMENTO - When Gov. Gray Davis announced the state would walk away from the Oracle software deal, his spokesman said the negotiations could take as long as two weeks. That was more than a month ago.</p> <p>As the legislative inquiry into the unprecedented no-bid contract enters its ninth and final week, state officials and the Redwood City company continue to hash out how to undo the contract to provide more than 250,000 licenses to access Oracle databases. The state's first payment of $14 million is due in September.</p>

<p>Ravi Mehta, the former Oracle Corp. lobbyist, last week took the Fifth, refusing to spell out to a legislative investigative committee his role in greasing Oracle's software contract through the Davis administration last year. But the documentary evidence given to the committee speaks loudly to his understanding of how to get a contract with California state government: Rent some politicians.</p>

<p>SACRAMENTO - A witness who refused to testify before legislators has triggered a simmering dispute over whether he would have provided information damaging to the governor's administration.</p> <p>The lawmaker leading the legislative probe of California's Oracle deal continued to insist Thursday that former state attorney Larry Kreig told the lawmaker's staff he had warned a Davis Cabinet secretary there were problems with the contract before it was signed.</p>

update In the hope of wooing application developers in China, Oracle has unveiled a Chinese version of its popular online resource center. The move comes as the database software giant steps up its investments in development centers throughout the country. The new Oracle Technology Network (OTN) Web site aims to provide free downloads of Oracle development tools and software, technology documentation and support services to developers in the country. Within OTN is a forum for information sharing among developers and a marketplace for job seekers. The English version, which has been in operation since 1998, has attracted 55,000 users...

Oracle plans to hire an additional 2,000 engineers to boost its development work force in Bangalore and Hyderabad, India. "India is important to Oracle because the market is vibrant," said Derek Williams, Oracle Asia-Pacific executive vice president. "The government is going electronic...many manufacturing companies are taking to ERP (enterprise resource planning) software, and financial services firms are changing their business practices (using IT)," Williams told reporters Wednesday during the OracleWorld conference in Beijing. He said Oracle sold more call center software in India than the rest of Asia-Pacific combined. In an earlier Wednesday meeting with Oracle CEO Larry Ellison,...