Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Non-Tech : The ENRON Scandal -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (740)	1/17/2002 12:54:22 PM
From: Karen Lawrence	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 5185

Fired Enron Auditor Laying Blame for Document Destruction on Accounting Firm's Lawyers By MARCY GORDON AP Business Writer WASHINGTON (AP) -- The auditor fired for destroying documents in the Enron Corp. (NYSE:ENE - news) affair is laying the blame squarely on his accounting firm, Arthur Andersen LLP, telling congressional investigators he was just following advice from its lawyers. The auditor was questioned for several hours Wednesday as the White House disclosed that President Bush's chief economic adviser, Lawrence Lindsey, was asked to study the impact of an Enron collapse after presidential aides were alerted to the problem last fall. The energy-trading concern, once the seventh-largest U.S. company, entered the biggest bankruptcy in the country's history on Dec. 2. David Duncan, the former chief auditor for Andersen's Enron account, said the Big Five accounting firm's lawyers suddenly began emphasizing Andersen's policy allowing destruction of some documents. Duncan told investigators with the House Energy and Commerce Committee that in September general discussions began at Andersen of what Enron-related documents to discard. Senior executives at Andersen considered dropping Enron as a client much earlier, in February, but that was part of a routine discussion of the accounting firm's auditing work, Andersen spokesman Patrick Dorton said Thursday. A Feb. 6 e-mail, sent to several senior Andersen managers and citing concerns about Enron's accounting practices, ``referred to a routine annual meeting that Andersen does with every client,'' Dorton said. ``It was normal practice.'' The e-mail indicated that Andersen executives may have been aware of potential problems at Enron much earlier than previously acknowledged. Duncan told the investigators ``it was unusual'' to emphasize the document-destruction policy, according to congressional sources familiar with what he said. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity. An Andersen spokesman declined comment. According to the sources, Duncan told investigators that an Oct. 12 memo from one of Andersen's lawyers was the beginning of an effort to discard many records. Andersen has said Duncan organized a two-week document destruction effort that began in late October. The accounting firm fired Duncan on Tuesday, put three other Enron auditors on administrative leave and stripped management responsibilities from four partners in its office in Houston, where Enron is based. At the White House, spokesman Ari Fleischer said Lindsey concluded late last year that Enron's collapse would not hurt U.S. and global financial markets. That's the same finding reached by Peter Fisher, the Treasury undersecretary in charge of financial markets who opened a review after two phone calls from Lay to Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill on Oct. 28 and Nov. 8. Lindsey, a former member of the Federal Reserve board of governors and a private economic consultant at the time, received $50,000 from Enron in 2000 as a member of an Enron advisory board, Enron has been Bush's biggest campaign benefactor over the years. In another development Wednesday, it was disclosed that Enron executive Sherron Watkins told a friend and former colleague at Andersen on Aug. 20 that she had concerns about Enron's accounting practices. It was revealed this week that Watkins warned Enron's chairman, Kenneth Lay, about her concerns, which focused on outside partnerships used by Enron executives to keep hundreds of millions of dollars in debt off the company's books. A hurried meeting at Andersen's Houston office took place Aug. 21 and Duncan participated. The meeting occurred the day before Watkins detailed her serious concerns in a meeting with Lay. ``It's now clear to us that key players at Andersen as well as Enron knew of the growing problems months before the company imploded,'' said Ken Johnson, spokesman for the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Duncan ``cooperated fully with our investigators,'' Johnson said. ``He answered all of our questions.'' Rep. James Greenwood, R-Pa., chairman of the panel's investigations subcommittee, revealed that the Andersen employee Watkins spoke to on Aug. 20 summarized their conversation. ``This document raises additional concerns about Andersen's knowledge of potential accounting irregularities and the subsequent destruction of Enron-related documents,'' Greenwood said. After Watkins' phone call to her former colleague at Andersen on Aug. 20, the accounting firm notified Enron's general counsel and were told that the law firm Vinson & Elkins was conducting an investigation. ``We're still looking into the facts here,'' said Dorton, the Andersen spokesman. ``We don't know what additional steps were taken'' by the accounting firm in response to the call from Watkins. The accounting firm took out a full-page ad in major newspapers Wednesday seeking to assure the public that it would ``do what is right'' in the Enron investigation and promising to cooperate with government and congressional investigations. In related developments: --Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said in a letter to Vice President Dick Cheney that Enron would have benefited from 17 provisions in Bush's national energy plan. ``This creates the unfortunate appearance that a large contributor received special access and obtained extraordinarily favorable results in the White House energy plan,'' he wrote. Fleischer on Thursday dismissed Waxman's review as ``one more partisan waste of taxpayers' money.'' --The chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Harvey Pitt, called a news conference for Thursday to discuss regulation of the accounting profession, including a proposal to create an oversight body that would include business people from outside the accounting industry, SEC spokeswoman Christi Harlan said. Several Democrats in Congress and the private group Common Cause called for Pitt, a securities lawyer who once represented Andersen, to remove himself from the SEC's civil investigation of Enron's accounting and Andersen's role in it. biz.yahoo.com

To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (740)	1/17/2002 8:08:12 PM
From: zonkie	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5185

Re: computer time problems I had the same problems with my computer losing time. I finally found a small program which will it fix by .........well read the following from the guys website. _____________ AboutTime is a superior source of time for your computer. As a time client, it will acquire time from the Internet with great accuracy, and as a server it will provide four kinds of time signals to other computers on your local network. AboutTime uses advanced signal-processing techniques to correct for network delays, making high accuracy possible even over a slow modem connection. In a local network with a copy of AboutTime installed on each machine, one can achieve + - 50 millisecond typical synchronization accuracies. AboutTime can be instructed to perform its tasks automatically, at startup or at chosen time intervals. It is a small program that can be run in the background without requiring many resources. AboutTime is compatible with all current Windows versions. Oh, I almost forgot the other good news. AboutTime is CareWare -- that means no money, now or ever. You just have to care. __________________ Ther is another program there called Arachnophilia which is a very very simple program for writing HTML programs, highly recommend if you ever need something like that. Mr Lutus (the author of the programs) seems to me like an alright guy. The first link below is the main page from which you can use a drop down menu to view other parts of the site. The second link is a direct link to the About Time program. arachnoid.com arachnoid.com

To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (740)	1/20/2002 12:10:22 AM
From: Mephisto	Respond to of 5185

We've tried various techniques to solve the time problem. It is too soon to know if the problem is solved. Today, it was one second off, but tomorrow it might be twenty minutes. This is the first time we have had problems with the pc clock. My other pc was twelve years old. You might have to reset the clock every year or so! (LOL) The fan is noisy but we expected it to be because the review said: expect it. My husband can change the fan. He intended to do replace it this weekend but so far he hasn't had time. The only other complaint is that the CD player vibrates. My husband will look into that problem as well. A serious problem is that the XP80 by MSFT is not secure and people need to download a patch. Of course, MSFT never told us that there was a problem. My husband found out somehow. The pc is mine. He doesn't use it. I wish he would quit messing with it though. Today, he managed to crash it for the first time and I lost a load of documents. He said he saved them all but I'll have to look them up and rename them. These pcs are a hassle and far too complicated for the average person. I never intended to buy a Dell but my old one was very unstable so we had to buy a new machine quickly.