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To: John Koligman who wrote (169979)6/27/2002 5:54:38 PM
From: stockman_scott  Respond to of 176387
 
<<how do you know some future president won't give him a pardon ala Mark Rich....>>

Kenny Boy is as well-connected as they come...if he ever gets behind bars it will be a true miracle.

regards,

-Scott

BTW, I do expect some of the large class action lawsuits to make life difficult for folks like Lay, Skilling and Fastow...Last time I checked there were more than several dozen class action suits against them. Firms like Milberg Weiss know how to extract money from their targets....Kenny Boy won't give up easily and I'm sure he's hired the best lawyers money can buy <G>.



To: John Koligman who wrote (169979)6/27/2002 6:12:04 PM
From: stockman_scott  Respond to of 176387
 
Mary Spaeth: The pessimistic view of American ethics from abroad

[This was published in a high tech newsletter in Chicago]



Subject: SV: The May Report: 06/26/2002....
Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2002 10:19:54 +0200
From: "Spaeth Mary" <mary.spaeth@mjardevi.se>
To: <owner-mayreport@list.themayreport.com>

Dear May Report and Readers,

It was with considerable dismay that I read yesterday's New York Times Headlines and with the rest of Europe and the world was shocked albeit not surprised by the report on WorldCom's overstated balance sheet.

The story, as well as many of the stories and letters I've read in the May Report these last few years confirms my current conviction that it is best just now for me to remain in Europe.

This morning's online edition of The Times, which I've just received (while you all are still asleep) quotes a Frankfurt banker, who following the disclosure of WorldCom's 'situation' says, "This is the most pessimistic sentiment against the United States that I have ever experienced in my career. There is unanimous agreement that the U.S. is not the best place to invest anymore."

Of course, as a rather proud American I am ashamed to read his words, and ashamed of those men and women, American or otherwise, who have to my mind, committed what is tantamount to modern day treason.

Sweden is not completely innocent on the financial playground. Percy Barnevik lost the admiration of many last year when ABB disclosed its own cost overruns and, for Swedish standards, questionable salaries and perks to the president and chairman at a time when the company suffered unspeakable losses and layoffs. Still, what I have enjoyed in this country is a level of trust and integrity among people that I've never experienced in my life. And, it is for this reason that I have now bought a home here and have today applied for the registration rights to a new company. But, it is also with incredible melancholy that I will return to Evanston next month to move my belongings from the family home and sell a property that the City has made impossible for me to keep regardless of whether I were to return or not.

The point of this letter is to greet my friends and provide some news of my activities, but also to provide a sort of admonition to say that good values and ethics are not things to be mocked. In the wake of the dotcom investment era, young entrepreneurs and businessmen and women are seeking more of an American dream than is perhaps proper or even realistic--and they are doing so at any cost.

Please, the next time you think of charging a lunch to your company, or a first class flight to a client, or the mileage on your car for a vacation you took (but just happened to stop in for a business meeting), stop and think of the repercussions. Don't lie on that resume. Check your ego at the door, and if you're raising a new family, think of the lessons that are appropriate for your children. If your child is 13 years old, don't lie to the restaurant and say she's 12 just to save a buck or two! Be honest at any cost and you'll sleep better at night, and so will all of those whose lives you touch.

We are a global economy--facing tough times. The actions of one gesture, one word spoken, on the trade room floor moves others to act from Tokyo to London, Moscow to NewDelhi. There was a time when Chicago attracted business from around the world because of something called the 'midwest ethic.' It's time to follow the actions of those like Colleen Rowley who took considerable risk in standing up to her superiors. Think hard about who you are, what you're doing, and let's get this country and its economy back on track. I may want to come home sometime.

Regards from afar,
Mary
Mary S. Spaeth
Affärsrådgivare/Senior Adviser
Mjärdevi Science Park AB
Teknikringen 7
583 30 Linköping
Sweden
Tel: +46 13 20 53 59 / Mob: +46 070 341 53 59
www.mjardevi.se



To: John Koligman who wrote (169979)6/27/2002 9:11:18 PM
From: stockman_scott  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 176387
 
Soros blames "Bush factor" for dollar's fall

biz.yahoo.com

Thursday June 27, 6:57 pm Eastern Time
Reuters Company News
Soros blames "Bush factor" for dollar's fall

By Elif Kaban

LONDON, June 27 (Reuters) - Billionaire investor George Soros on Thursday blamed U.S. President George W. Bush and his team for the fall in the U.S. dollar and declared: "The international financial system is coming apart at the seams."

"I think we're in fairly serious trouble. I do think we're in a crisis situation," said the Hungarian-born hedge fund king-turned-philantropist in a speech to the London Business School on Thursday evening.

"We have the Latin American crisis and we have the declining U.S. dollar, which means that the motor of the global economy is basically switched off," said Soros.

"There is a lack of confidence. That's what I call the 'Bush factor' in the economy," said the 72-year-old speculator.

Soros, whose assault on the British pound 10 years ago ejected Britain from the European exchange rate mechanism, said the dollar's recent decline had taken him by surprise.

"What worries me is that there doesn't seem to be any great desire on part of the authorities to do much. There is still a belief, particularly in the United States, that the financial markets will correct themselves. But markets cannot be left on their own. You need to correct them," said Soros.

The dollar has seen multi-year lows against the euro amid worries about profitability, corporate chicanery and global security.

It slumped to within a cent of parity with the euro on Wednesday on news of the accounting scandal at U.S. telecoms group WorldCom Inc. and sagged against major currencies on Thursday against a backdrop of news that the U.S. economy expanded at a 6.1 percent annual rate in the first quarter, the fastest in more than two years, and firmer Wall Street stocks.

Analysts, while regarding the U.S. economic team's handling of the dollar drop as not very elegant, say there is nothing to suggest the Bush administration is unhappy about the slide, something that may please its business constituents.

Many are wondering what happened to the "strong dollar" policy born in the Clinton era and left to flounder under Bush.

On Thursday, White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey said on CNBC television that the administration did support a strong dollar but he also backed the view that the markets should set the value of the currency.

But Soros said: "The claim that markets are always right is a false claim. What's true is that markets are often wrong, therefore you need intervention by central banks."

ANYONE AT HOME?

Soros said the "Bush factor" was to blame for a flight to liquidity in financial markets. "Everyone's going home. The Swiss banks are going home. The strengthening of the yen also clearly shows repatriation," he said.

"The markets are looking for leadership. Stock markets would take heart from intervention by the United States because it would show that there's somebody at home," he said.

Soros declined to comment when asked by Reuters about the outlook for the ailing U.S. currency and U.S. assets.

He said the global economic downturn had exposed the weaknesses of corporate America and how the U.S. administration runs the international economic system.

He said that the collapse of U.S. oil trader Enron Corp. and the accounting scandal at WorldCom were to a large extent a "natural fallout" from the economic boom-and-bust cycle following the bull market of the 1990s and the ensuing burst.

"But the decline in the markets have gone somewhat further than what would be the natural consequences of the previous exuberance," Soros said.

"What is not the natural consequence of that boom and bust cycle is the decline in the U.S. dollar. If things had gone according to plan, the dollar ought to have been quite strong."

"The decline in the dollar came as a surprise to me," he added.

"I attribute it to lack of confidence in the management of affairs by the United States, its unilateralism, the pursuit of national self-interests and not living up to the responsibility of being the dominant financial power in the world, not taking care of the system."



To: John Koligman who wrote (169979)6/28/2002 5:52:06 AM
From: stockman_scott  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 176387
 
Where's Bush?

By Steve Bailey, Boston Globe Columnist, 6/28/2002

Ten days after the Sept. 11 attacks, with all of America watching, President Bush asked the nation to gird itself for an unprecedented war on terrorism and made a personal pledge to bring the perpetrators to justice.

That extraordinary address to Congress helped redefine his presidency and set the stage for America's response to the terrorists. The perpetrators are still at large, but the president's words and deeds were an important first step that allowed the country to begin to heal.

There is another crisis of stunning proportions unfolding before us, this one a crisis of confidence in the markets and the economy. Enron, Global Crossing, Tyco, and now WorldCom have all become household names - not, however, for the reasons that corporations routinely spend millions to make their names into brands. But Bush, the nation's CEO, has had little to say about it, in public at least.

On Wednesday, in his sharpest statement to date, Bush called the WorldCom disclosures ''outrageous'' and promised, ''We will fully investigate and hold people accountable for misleading not only shareholders but employees as well.'' Bush made his remarks at the opening day of an eight-nation economic summit, hidden away in a fancy resort in someplace called Kananaskis, Alberta, wherever that is.

That won't do. As he did to such great effect after Sept. 11, Bush needs to stand up before the nation and pledge to bring the perpetrators to justice. And this time they won't be hard to find: They are not hiding in some who-knows-where cave in Afghanistan, but living the good life in Corporate America's boardrooms.

The crisis of confidence now shaking the economy and the markets was made at the top, not at the bottom. The decisions that crushed Enron and Tyco and WorldCom were not made by the employees but by the top executives. The most important thing Bush can do right now to restore confidence in the system is to find the guilty and put them in jail. ''The risk of white-collar crime just went up,'' Bush, our chief law enforcement officer, should tell the nation.

Bush has a chance to be the Teddy Roosevelt of his time. It was 100 years ago, and Roosevelt, a Republican president, stood up to the most powerful businessmen of his generation - J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, James J. Hill - and declared that the giant financial and industrial trusts had to be stopped. Roosevelt pounded the table, drafted legislation, and directed his Justice Department to sue to break up the trusts run by men whose ambition had grown into a threat to the nation.

''He was willing to put the whole power and prestige of the White House on the line,'' says presidential scholar Douglas Brinkley of the University of New Orleans. ''It took extreme courage to do what Roosevelt did. He never cared about public opinion polls.''

Opinion polls are a part of every politician's calculus a century later, and Bush has taken a cautious approach for economic and political reasons. Some Bush advisers worry that a strong response could rattle nervous markets even more. Enron offered a minefield of problems for an administration with deep ties to the energy business.

Bush is said to have made his anger about the meltdown in business ethics known in private, including in a meetings last week with a group of top business leaders. He is said to lose his temper when he talks about the shenanigans of chief executives like Tyco's L. Dennis Kozlowski, who resigned in the wake of charges that he tried to cheat New York out of sales tax on millions in fine art. But in public, all we have gotten is sound bites.

Bush likes William McKinley, the common man's pro-business president, as a model. A better model for this extraordinary moment is Roosevelt, the Republican who followed McKinley, got tough on Big Business, and was rewarded with a landslide re-election.

Steve Bailey is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at 617-929-2902 or at bailey@globe.com.

This story ran on page E1 of the Boston Globe on 6/28/2002.

boston.com



To: John Koligman who wrote (169979)6/28/2002 9:12:53 AM
From: Sig  Read Replies (3) | Respond to of 176387
 
John:
This morning I ran across an old portfolio of 17 tech stocks I once owned.
The value today is $55,000, and the loss was $156,488.
The only stock up in value was 1460 shrs Dell with a profit of $14,000
Dell: The last true buy and hold stock?