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Non-Tech : Martha Stewart -- Scourge or Scapegoat -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bcanada who wrote (90)	3/6/2004 12:44:06 AM
From: SalemsHex	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 165

I forget, how many billions did Enron cost investors? How many folks at Enron lost their jobs and had their retirement plans wiped out? There's film clips of Lay encouraging Enron investors to buy MORE shares while he was selling. And he was selling because he knew the company was in deep shit. When did Enron file for bankruptcy? How many of those crooks have been convicted? None!! Why Martha and not them? You talk about "integrity" in the markets? Wooo! Not so, it's all about politics. And if it wasn't, then Lay, Bush, Cheney and many others would be sporting a striped suit today. Martha was a scapegoat. I only wished she'd had the foresight to have walked into the SEC office with a lawyer, and not alone.

To: bcanada who wrote (90)	3/6/2004 1:57:09 AM
From: Jeffrey S. Mitchell	Respond to of 165

bcanada, your comments about a broker's oath and the integrity of the stock exchange applies to Baconvoic, not Martha, even though I know Martha, having been a broker, obviously knew that what Baconvoic was doing was, at the very least, improper. Let's remember that the judge dropped the securities fraud charge against Martha because there was no evidence to support market manipulation. One could argue that Martha's actions (read: lies) were based more on vanity (i.e. to avoid besmirching her good name, and perhaps, to some small degree, getting her broker and his firm in trouble) than on covering up evidence of a criminal misdeed. It was these actions that got her convicted. The lessons to be learned here are from Banconvoic's conviction: if you are a broker, follow the law with all your clients, not just a select few. The only lesson to be learned from Martha's conviction is that you should never lie to federal authorities during an investigation. So, when you think about it, Martha is being made to symbolize a problem where she was the recipient of misdeeds, not the provider. - Jeff