--Don
Home Depot playing the same games as Enron? Hardly! Here's what Enron was doing. Enron set up partnerships, sometimes with employees, that they funded with Enron stock. The partnerships used the stock to get loans. The partnership agreements required the partnerships to pay a regular amount to Enron, thus, Enron used its own stock to pump up its earnings without the debt that provided the money showing on their balance sheet.
Home Depot is doing long term lease financing. Even the note you cited points out that the capitalized present value of the leases is shown as long-term debt. Where's the problem?
Don, I repeat, considering your negative opinion of HD, you should definitely mortgage everything you own to pump up your margin account and let you short every share of HD you can get your hands on. BTW, if you do that, you ultimately won't be able to afford the electricity to run your computer and you will, sadly, fall silent.
Best
--Steve |
