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To: GVTucker who wrote (469)	6/13/2001 12:42:10 AM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1715

Vance, I am once again overwhelmed by the intelligence and effort you put into these "birds on a wire" episodes. It's like, we're here to learn something and share valuable information. Thanks, I do appreciate it. Now let me tear you apart. You say: Once again, the key point of the market manipulation proponents has a basic flaw: the profits of the 'cabal' that everyone rails against are not up significantly right now. Now that is low. You, acting as an apologist for the machiavellian manipulation of GAAP. I'm shocked. I thought you were on the buy side. No? Profits? What a ridiculous thing for corporations to admit to. An insufferable nuisance. Just ask Paul O'Neil. He wants to eliminate the reason that corporations do everything under the sun to obfuscate profits. He wants to eliminate corporate income taxes. [[Aside: for clueless newbie lurkers, Paul O'Neil is your Secretary of Treasury and he wants you to pay more taxes while his cronies in the corporate suites pay less, got that?]] But, O'Neil hasn't had his way yet, so in the meantime, certain, uhh, games, shall we say, are being played with numbers. Think of Las Vegas, er, Lost Wages. OK, enough with the banter, Vance, now it's brass knuckles. What in the world are you doing trying to buffalo me with bottom line net profit figures? Come on, brudda, neither of us are this naive. We both know that EBITDA is a more accurate reflection of a corporations performance. And we both know that any CFO worth his salt can find wonderful little niches in the cash flow statement to defer income, to mask profitability and to completely frustrate the sleuth of public filings, seeking the plethora of arbitrary and somewhat cynical alternatives that FASB provides on the margins. Your use of the most obvious, most easily manipulable and least accurate accountancy variable (net profit) to suggest that there's no manipulation that is going on is hysterically funny to me. Now, Vance, I know you are not that naive. What's your game? You say: While conspiracy makes for fun speculation, the facts tell me that there is a much simpler cause--supply and demand. If you are running money, and you aren't pulling my leg, I suggest that you are in big trouble. The price at the Henry Hub has nothing in the world to do with what is going on at the Mojave tollgate, where El Paso squeezed the market. So, to get to the point, are you being disingenuous or naive? I'm completely baffled. I thought that you were a white hat dude, but my opinion is beginning to shift. Please advise, Ray