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: TigerPaw who wrote (4468)	9/17/2002 11:52:35 AM
From: Mephisto	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 5185

[ Enron's Thomas White is now secretary of US Army] The following is an excerpt from: Cronies in Arms By PAUL KRUGMAN " When one top executive learned of millions in further losses, his e-mailed response summed up the whole strategy: "Close a bigger deal. Hide the loss before the 1Q." The strategy worked. Enron collapsed, but not before insiders made off with nearly $1 billion. The sender of that blunt e-mail sold $12 million in stocks just before they became worthless. And now he's secretary of the Army." nytimes.com SI reference: Message 17999783 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> TP, I don't understand why Congress has not insisted upon White's removal. I've read in other stories that Enron's energy divison thatt White ran was a shell. It never made money. A long time ago, I read that when outsiders would visit Enron energy, Enron moved personnel into the area, complete with desks and computers, to make it look like Enron Energy employed people who actually worked. I believe a fellow called Pai was also connected with this unit. He made out like a bandit b4 Enron fell. Why isn't Congress doing anything?

To: TigerPaw who wrote (4468)	9/17/2002 12:00:25 PM
From: Mephisto	Respond to of 5185

Fortunes of war await Bush's circle after attacks on Iraq news.independent.co.uk By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles 15 September 2002 The last time the United States went to war against Iraq, Dick Cheney did very nicely from it. Having served as Defence Secretary, and basked in the reflected glory of the US military's surprisingly rapid advance across the desert sands to end the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, he then managed to reap benefits of a very different kind once the war was over and he left government to become chief executive of Halliburton, the Texas-based oil services company. When the United Nations relaxed its sanctions regime in 1998 and permitted Iraq to buy spare parts for its oil fields, it was Halliburton, under Mr Cheney's leadership, that cleaned up on the contract to repair war damage and get Saddam Hussein's oil pipes flowing at full capacity again. Two Halliburton subsidiaries did business worth almost $24m (£15m) with the man whom these days Mr Cheney calls a "murderous dictator" and "the world's worst leader". Since taking over as George Bush's vice-president, Mr Cheney has severed all formal ties with his former employer, notably when he cashed in $36m in stock options and other benefits at the height of the market in August 2000. But Halliburton - currently struggling with a corporate accounting scandal that may or may not implicate Mr Cheney - could profit all over again if the much-threatened new war against Iraq comes to pass. We can certainly expect more air strikes against the oil fields, possibly combined with a ground invasion. Then, when it is all over, someone is going to have to mop up the damage once again. Halliburton, with its previous experience and unparalleled political connections (not limited to Mr Cheney), would be in pole position for the job. Nobody could justifiably accuse the Bush administration of wanting to wage war on Iraq solely as a favour to its friends in the oil business and the military-industrial complex. But many of the companies that stand to gain most from a war enjoy remarkably close ties to senior figures in the administration. And some of the President's closest confidants have shown extraordinary elasticity down the years in their attitudes to President Saddam, America's on-again, off-again public enemy number one. Mr Cheney, who has gone from warmonger to dealmaker and back to warmonger, is just one example. Donald Rumsfeld, the current Defence Secretary, has repeatedly raised the spectre of Iraq's arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. But in 1983, when Mr Rumsfeld was President Reagan's special envoy to Iraq, he turned a blind eye to Iraqi use of nerve and mustard gas in its war with Iran, concentrating instead on forging a personal relationship with the Iraqi leader, then considered a valuable US ally. Mr Rumsfeld was actually in Baghdad on the day the United Nations first reported Iraqi use of chemical weapons, but chose to remain silent, as did the rest of the US establishment. Five years later, he cited his ability to make friends with Saddam Hussein as one of his qualifications for a possible run at the presidency. This Bush administration has been much more upfront about the role of oil in its deliberations on Iraq than the last Bush administration. That is partly a matter of circumstance: since the 11 September attacks, the stability of Middle Eastern oil states has been a big policy consideration. But it also reflects the fact that much of the Bush inner circle, including the President himself, is made up of former oilmen. The oil and gas industry has pumped about $50m to political candidates since the 2000 election. There are also uncomfortably cosy ties between the government and the defence industry. Mr Rumsfeld's oldest friend, Frank Carlucci, a former defence secretary himself, now heads the Carlyle Group, an investment consortium which has a big interest in the contracting firm United Defense. Carlyle's board includes George Bush Sr and James Baker, the former secretary of state. One programme alone - the Crusader artillery system - has earned Carlyle more than $2bn in advance government contracts. Carlyle's European chairman is John Major, who may have played a role in the Ministry of Defence's controversial recent decision to declare Carlyle the "preferred bidder" for a stake in its scientific research division. None of these links is illegal, but that does not mean there is no conflict of interest. Messrs Bush, Cheney and friends have either sold their stock holdings or put them in a blind trust, meaning personal gain is off the agenda. But gain for their friends and family may well be a by-product of the looming war against Iraq. news.independent.co.uk

To: TigerPaw who wrote (4468)	9/20/2002 3:36:34 PM
From: Mephisto	Respond to of 5185

The Vision Thing The New York Times "But the most striking similarity between now and a decade ago, it seems to me, is political. For all the differences between the moderate father and the deeply conservative son, now as then we have an administration whose key figures are fundamentally uninterested in and uncomfortable with economic policy" September 20, 2002 By PAUL KRUGMAN This is the way the recovery ends - not with a bang but with a whimper. O.K., I could be wrong. Industrial production is falling and layoffs are rising. But it's still not a sure thing that the months ahead will be bad enough for the business-cycle referees to declare a renewed recession. And on the other hand, the administration seems determined to have a bang sometime before Nov. 5. But right now it looks as if the economy is stalling, and also as if the people in charge have no idea what to do. In short, it's feeling a lot like the early 1990's. It doesn't really matter whether you call what's going on right now a slow recovery or a recession. Most people don't care whether G.D.P. growth is slightly above or below zero; what matters to them is whether they can find jobs and keep them. And the job situation is increasingly dismal. A 5.7 percent unemployment rate doesn't sound that bad, but an unusually large number of workers have given up searching for jobs. The overall unemployment rate also doesn't reflect the rapidly growing number of people who are truly desperate, because they have been out of work for six months or more. And the employment situation has lately taken a significant turn for the worse: the number of people filing new claims for unemployment insurance, a leading indicator of future unemployment, has increased sharply over the past month. At best, then, this is a recovery that, as far as workers are concerned, might as well be a continuing recession. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out that in terms of job losses and long-term unemployment, the current slowdown is already a match for the nasty recession of the early 1990's. So this really is like the early 1990's all over again. The economic similarity between our current difficulties and the slump under the first George Bush is stronger than most people realize. In 1990, as in 2001, the economy went into a recession in part because of past excesses - though those quaint old scandals involving junk bonds and real estate speculation seem very tame in the age of Enron and Tyco. In the early 1990's, as today, recession was followed by a "jobless recovery," in which G.D.P grew but employment didn't. And then as now there was concern that interest rate cuts by the Fed might not be enough to turn the economy around - though back then we didn't yet have the example of Japan to show that the "liquidity trap," in which even a zero interest rate isn't enough to produce an economic recovery, was a real possibility in the modern world. But the most striking similarity between now and a decade ago, it seems to me, is political. For all the differences between the moderate father and the deeply conservative son, now as then we have an administration whose key figures are fundamentally uninterested in and uncomfortable with economic policy. That statement may strike you as strange: wasn't the tax cut George W. Bush's central achievement before Osama bin Laden came along? But the tax cut was never intended as an economic policy: it was a political gesture designed to ward off a challenge from Steve Forbes and satisfy the conservative base. Only later did the administration make the providential discovery that it was also just the thing to fight recession, promote family values and cure the common cold. And it can't seem to come up with anything else, now that the tax cut that wasn't designed to fight a recession has, sure enough, failed to fight a recession. When Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill was asked for new ideas that came out of the comical Waco summit, his answer was - are you ready? - making the tax cut permanent. Should we be worried about the administration's lack of the vision thing when it comes to economics? Yes, we should. The excesses of the 1990's dwarfed those of the 1980's, and the economic risks are correspondingly larger. Suppose that, as seems increasingly plausible, the deteriorating job situation finally undermines the dogged optimism of America's consumers. In that case we'll need some decisive action - action determined by what the economy needs, not by what Karl Rove thinks will play in the polls. How much chance is there that we'll get it? nytimes.com Copyright 2002 The New York Times

To: TigerPaw who wrote (4468)	9/24/2002 11:53:24 PM
From: Mephisto	Respond to of 5185

[Halliburton] by PAUL KRUGMAN The New York Times September 24, 2002 The following is attached to Mr. Krugman's article, "White Man's Burden:" Halliburton has objected to my use of the word "confiscate" in summarizing changes in pension benefits to employees whose divisions were sold, changes described in a Sept. 10 New York Times article. Although Halliburton's actions were legal - I did not suggest otherwise - they had the effect of depriving workers of benefits they had been led to expect. In particular, workers who planned to take early retirement were informed that they had "severed" their employment relationship - even though they had no choice in the matter - and that as a result, if they retired early they would not receive the level of benefits suggested by their retirement plan statements. However much Halliburton may try to put a spin on its actions, its behavior remains, as one pension expert quoted in the original article put it, "scandalous." nytimes.com Copyright 2002 The New York Times >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> The following is an excerpt from the article, "Cronies in Arms," published on September 17, 2002 by Paul Krugman "A story in last week's Times may shed light on that question. It concerned another company that sold a division, then declared that its employees had "resigned," allowing it to confiscate their pensions. Yet this company did exactly the opposite when its former C.E.O. resigned, changing the terms of his contract so that he could claim full retirement benefits; the company took an $8.5 million charge against earnings to reflect the cost of its parting gift to this one individual. Only the little people get shafted. The other company is named Halliburton. The object of its generosity was Dick Cheney." nytimes.com SI REFERENCE: Message 17999783