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

To: John Curtis who wrote (1168)	1/25/2002 4:32:07 PM
From: Mephisto	Respond to of 5185

John, the fallout from Enron's collapse is huge and its impact on so many people is horrendous. There are stories all over today's newspapers.

To: John Curtis who wrote (1168)	1/25/2002 6:39:36 PM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5185

Hi John, I'm interested in pursuing this Mahonia story further. I'm hoping you might have a URL to share on the information you've provided. The use of an under-regulated off-shore schemes like the Jersey banking facility is actually about the most interesting aspect of the Enron story. All of the press and TV time about document shredding and suicides and the sad sack employees is missing the point entirely. What Enron, JP Morgan, Citibank and all the other partners in LJM, JEDI, Chewco and the other 3,000 (or 6,000??) partnerships were involved in was a massive fraud upon the American public, diverting the nation's wealth into off-shore tax havens and the bank accounts of some of the most despicable, amoral people on the planet. The same breed, like Ken Lay, who wrap themselves up in the flag as patriots while the shirk all responsibility* for the society from which they are reaping their ill-gotten gains. It would be the height of naivete for anyone to believe that Ken Lay would allow Andrew Fastow to profit so dramatically from his managing partner's position in the LJM partnerships, without having a much greater, if undisclosed, windfall arranged for himself. He'd do it for the sake of his ego if nothing else. What Arthur Anderson and the Enron accountants were so diligently destroying was the record of hidden positions that Lay and others held in the off-shore partnerships, where they've netted hundreds of millions in untraceable, untaxed profits. This is the big scandal, and unfortunately it is the part of the story which is most likely to get swept under the rug because it implicates too much of the elite of Wall Street in the fleecing of America by its corrupt elites. There are so many dirty hands, and the corruption is spread so far throughout the cultures of Houston, Washington and New York that we will never be allowed to learn the truth. -Ray *Lay's civic philanthropy notwithstanding. I would contend that he considered his charities to be basically good PR at a very small cost, and an insignificant sum compared to his hidden gains.