Hi Mac,
WCOM, Enron, GLobal Crossing etc are a very simple story. These companies overexpanded during the boom years of the cycle.
And they used debt that they have not had sufficient free cash flow to service to fund the buildout of their capital projects.
It's that simple. It really is.
Yes there were bad accounting practices. "everyone" let this go on because they were infatuated with the stock market returns of 20+% during the second half of the 1990's.
Where is Robert Rubin and why is he not explaining to every single person in the World how he let this happen. I remember watching in person Robert Rubin's Senate Confirmation hearing back when our Texas Senator Llyod Benson, stricken with Cancer, became too ill to continue to act as Secretary of the Treasury.
Rubin was confirmed by the senate with a vote that was 99 to 0, the first time in modern US history that a Treasury Secretary was confirmed without a single vote of dissent.
At the time, I commented that anytime the mass mood was so overwhelmingly willing to endorse an individual, it was fated that bad things would transpire during his tenure.
And bad things truly did transpire.
The collapse of companies in 2001 and 2002, were caused by the absolute dearth of regulation, oversight, commonsense and common decency of The Clinton Administration.
Raymond Duray, who is so concerned about the all the money that has been taken by the corruption in the system, should rise to this occasion and also join me in writing letter to Bill Clinton, Bob Rubin, Al Gore, Hillary R. Clinton, and Joe Liberman and ask them to please explain how they let this happen.
Joe Liberman is especially guilty in this. We have live C-span footage of him in the Senate back in 1994 and he was pivotal in defeating the legislative effort to make companies treat employee stock options as an expense. Had Liberman not caved in to the big money interests, and the insurance companies the bubble would not have occurred. It's that simple, he could have gotten the bill through that would have nipped this stock market bubble in the bud.
How could Joe Liberman do this to all of the innocent people in America. And this man has the audacity to defile the public discourse with any hint that he might run in 2004. And what about Al Gore and Hillary? These two people engineered this along with Bill Clinton. They juiced the economy for everything it was worth for their own personal and political gain.
Where is President Clinton, Al Gore, Joe Liberman and Hillary Clinton. Why are they not being interviewed and called to account for this?
These folks are all Yale Law grads, Rhodes scholar types and extremely smart. If you and I, Jorj, Tim and many other people seem to know this how could Bob, Bill, Al and Joe and Hillary not know this?
I would recommend that anyone who has lost a significant part of their retirement and wants some answers, sit down and write a personal letter to each of those 5 and ask them how this could have happened.
If the letter is written with honesty and humility, I have to believe that we should get a few responses.
I'm seriously thinking about doing this.
Martha Stewart did not cause our problems, GW Bush sure did not cause this mess. Any reasonable adult can not blame George Bush Senior for this or Dick Cheney.
I think it's time we get real about who was running the executive branch of the US government in the 1990's.
I can see that I am being called to action to write more comprehensive essays on the bubble years and the Millenium crash years. It does seem that I'm being encouraged by some to sit down and write a book or two that systematically goes through how this all occurred.
And God Willing, I'm certainly willing to discuss all of this at great length, and also willing to attempt to distill this MacroEconomic cycle into a cogent and readable book.
Anyone interested in comparing notes on elements of the story arch? This Labratory has basically been discussing this boom and bust for the past 2 1/2 years.
Maybe it's time we really get serious about all of this.
This country needs leadership. It certainly has some and the current administration has certainly shown more resolve
than those who did in the 1990's. We need to look very seriously at what the Clinton era has done to our world.
In 1998 Bill Clinton ordered a missle attack on Osama Bin Laden's base. Since Clinton was being impeached for lying to the America public and pounding his lecture and telling us emphatically that he was not lying when he was, President Clinton had used up his political goodwill even among conservatives and liberals and thus we thought that his Missle attack on Bin Laden was a Orwellian diversionary technique to make us stop wondering what the real meaning of IS, is
In fact, President Clinton was doing the right thing, but after a while it was hard to tell when he was trying to do the right thing and when he was simply pandering to the polls and triangulating his presidential actions in accordance with political public opinion polls.
What Does William Jefferson Clinton really stand for? What does Hillary Rodham Clinton really stand for? What do Gore, Liberman and Rubin really believe in?
I'd honestly like to know and I'd also like to know why I have to sit down and write this.
I've know many, many of you for several years now, what the heck is going on that I have to tack time away from my job and my bedtime tonight to ask the questions that should be more widely asked?
Am I personally going to have to get involved in Politics here in Texas to see that we see some accountability on these macroeconomic issues? I find it hard to believe that we have enough confusion these days that I could actually add so value to political and Macro economic thinking.
May everyone have a good night, and I will personally pray for a safe, serene and happy 4th of July week for the entire country.
John |
