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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill who wrote (271981)	7/9/2002 3:57:54 PM
From: jlallen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

It would be intersting to determine if the money loaned to the Harken insiders was in fact repaid. If it was repaid, accounting treatment aside, it would seem that this would be an actual profit to Harken. Then we can contrast this to the financial carnage accruing to the Banks who lent money to the Clintons and their partners on the Whitewater deal....

To: Bill who wrote (271981)	7/9/2002 4:07:08 PM
From: G_Barr	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

I'm not sure you're correct about that, at least relative to the arms-length transaction rules of the 1980s. LBOs by insiders were very common at the time and I believe a sale of that kind of asset is almost always accounted for as profit. An accountant friend told me it is only accounted as a profit when the loan is paid off. This seems to me to be common sense as it would be a little ridiculous that a company should be able to sell off its assets to insiders for nothing but IOUs and claim profits they may never get. However, if there is some other security involved it might make sense to treat it otherwise but I have not seen information on that.