ENRON

i haven't given up on intelligent discussion in this forum.

man, as if i needed another reason to prove that mr. bush is one slimey motherfucker.

god damn. this is some truly scandalous shit. i just feel bad for those people who held stock in enron and the enron employees who were not complicit in the whole fiasco. that's some bullshit.

many of enron's top executives made over 100 million dollars each in the selling of their personal stock in the company while employees were restricted from selling their stock and received company stock in place of a standard 401K.

if bush were a democrat, the republican mafia would have already lynched him after a torturous media witch hunt. peep his connections with enron, from this robert scheer article from thenation.com :

One of the major falsehoods being bandied about by apologists for the Bush Administration is that while Enron may have bankrolled much of the President's political career it got nothing for those bucks once George W. occupied the White House.

That is nonsense.

The Administration's energy program, developed by Vice President Dick Cheney in secret meetings--six of them with Enron officials--could have been written by lobbyists for the now failed company. At the behest of Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Los Angeles), the minority staff of the House Committee on Government Reform has prepared a devastating analysis of 17 major concessions made to Enron that gave Kenneth L. Lay, Bush's intimate friend and Enron chief executive, just about everything he wanted. The report concluded that "it is unlikely that any other corporation in America stood to gain as much from the White House plan as Enron."

Those Bush Administration concessions to Enron included finishing the job of deregulating the electricity market begun by Bush's father. The senior Bush's actions had paved the way for the company's meteoric growth.

George W.'s energy plan also made it even easier for Enron to sell energy derivatives in the commodity market and pursue other financial shenanigans that had been a major source of profit. The unregulated selling of energy derivatives, an Enron specialty, was celebrated in the Bush energy plan as "sophisticated and customizable." We now know that practice was so sophisticated that it was the major source of Enron's paper profits.

Oddly, given that Republicans are presumed to favor leaving power with the states, the Bush energy plan emphasized increased federal power over utility pipelines that forced local utilities to carry Enron's product. This was an expansion of the "open access" powers granted in the 1992 Energy Policy Act, passed in the first Bush Administration. That law undermined the power of local authorities and regional utility companies for the benefit of Enron. In 1999, Enron had defined "open access" as the company's "single-most important initiative."

Two years later, George W. delivered. Fortunately this subversion of the political process had a short life because Enron went belly up before Bush could save the company from itself.

dude... toe the line, be a company man...

the new spin is that Babs Bush owned Enron stock which she bought at a dollar or so and sold at 43 cents... so, the Bush's are victims too... WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!

this whole stock market thing is bullshit.....FUCK THE GOVERMENT

krylon2, at least back up your opinion.

basically, enron helped bush. bush fucked enron.

my dad worked for enron for 25 years. i was in a bar the other night with my mom, and as we were walking to the car she was crying and said "now, ken lay (enron CEO) has all our fucking money." it was pretty funny. enron has done some kind of shady things in their rise to the top. and, for that i have never liked them, but they did put food on my table for a long time. go greed go!

your mom was crying because she is financially distressed and it funny?

B&G-

bush didn't fuck enron... read that nation shit in my first post. enron executives fucked themselves. the whole thing was a fucking sham. the bushes were helping out enron for years.

i'm sorry that the whole thing affected your family. i think that's fucked up. enron execs effectively sold families like yours out.

Corporations suck, but I have to question the naivete of the employees, who should know full well by now that corporations suck. They have no loyalty whatsoever. So why do employees trust the top brass with their life savings and future? The same shit happened at Polaroid.

Nobody gives a shit about what happens to your money more than YOU do. Educate yourself a little bit and manage your own money. It's not that hard. What's best for CEOs and Wall Street brokers is precisely what's worst for you, so tell them all to go to hell.

i play it safe and invest in mutual funds.....i got my ira set up already so when i retire when im 60 ill have enough money to keep me living comfortably....on a side note, kmart filied chapter 11 bankrupcy....

i keep a wide array of both large and small arms, as well as enough ammo to last me till samsara... that has nothing to do with enron, but fuck a corporation.

think of it like this.

if you get a pager from the corner store with a one year contract, and you terminate it early, you have to pay a cancelation fee.

if the corner store stops selling and servicing pagers, you're fucked.

thats how big business works. you can never, ever win.

except i can, cause im just not paying the credit card companies anything. i'll show them! :o

Originally posted by Cracked Ass

What's best for CEOs and Wall Street brokers is precisely what's worst for you, so tell them all to go to hell.

Yes, and start an underground fighting group to relinquish your lack of feeling on your fellow, smothered-in-some-negative-way-by-society peers through rigorous, painful beatings which will ultimately free your caged inner self.

Wait, that was Fight Club ... nevermind.

yeah, it sucks... my dad gave his life for that company. and, because of that, wasnt around too much when i was a kid. my family will be ok. my mom may not get all the nic-naks she wants. but, they will survive. my mom's hatred for ken lay is funny. and, the fact that my parents are learning that money isnt everything so late in life is interesting. in the past year, between sysco and enron, my parents have lost a small fortune, but they will cope.

enron gave a shitload to bush's campaign in hopes of bush helping them out with legislation (which is not something that i condone... read above: i am not a big fan of enron to begin with), but, their loyalty (which is admirable) was all for not, when bush didnt help them out. so, bush got into the situation when it was profitable for him, and then was ready to fuck them in the ass, when all was said and done. quit listening to your parents views, and create your own.

i cant remember what i was watching last night, but they were discussing this, and discussing how infact bush didnt fuck them in the ass, they just fucked themselfs up so badly that there was nothing bush could possibly do to help them at that point. i'll try and find the source and repost it.

this enron shit has been interesting to me, because i knew absolutely nothing about it, until it was already fodder for late night monologues. so now im trying to play catch up, yet at the same time, i really dont give a shit cause i know it will happen a million times this year on varying scales...

when i stop posting and you find out ive moved to a monastarie in thialand, dont be suprised.

you say this will happen a million times... which, it will, but i dont think people realize the magnitude of this. enron, at one point last year, was the 6th largest company in america. this is definitely a situation that demands attention.

oh, no, i agree, this is a huge deal... my point was simply to say that no matter how much i know, what can i stop? i know thats a very defeatest attitude, but i am only me, and even if there were a million of me, big business just squashes anything they disagree with. i just hate the world. im gonna go get in the shower now.

no offense dude, you're just wrong. and chill with that "get your own views that aren't your parents." that's herb shit and you don't even know the half of who you might be talking to. seeking and i (as well as cracked) are well older than you and are no longer actively receiving current events perspectives from parents. we've all shown the ability to intelligently converse on this forum for a minute now. and plus, since you're just wrong, it makes you sound worse.

seeking is right, just as i was right in my previous posts. BUSH WAS GOING TO HELP ENRON. PLEASE READ MY FIRST POST AGAIN- IT EXPLAINS THIS. yes, enron gave tons to bush and he was in the process of creating legislation that would be gold for them (again check out the italics in the first post). enron was so poorly managed (and such a fraud) that it did not last long enough to reap the benefits of the energy legislation that bush & co was about to push.

Originally posted by TEARZ

you don't even know the half of who you might be talking to. seeking and i (as well as cracked) are well older than you.

i dont know who i am talking to... but, you some how now my age? real classy...

i agree both parties fucked up... but, enron didnt just hurt themselves here. believe me i am almost as anti-enron as i am anti-bush... well, no, not even close... but, i am not a fan of either.

look man, i'm not trying to start a shit flinging fest with you. i'd like to know your perspective, but based on what you're saying i can't believe that you 1. read what was first posted from the nation or 2. are informed entirely of what's going on. it's not a bush vs. enron thing. you can hate bush AND hate enron. i do both. it's a bush AND enron corruption thing. i can see how from you're familial perspective that you think that bush fucked enron, but that's just not true. he (and especially his family) helped build them from the start. in 94 he pressured the argentinian government to give enron a national pipeline deal down there (just as an example). what's the ideal situation for you? what would you have liked to see happen? i mean obviously you don't want you're family to lose money (and i am by no means making light of this at all), but did you really want dubya to pass corrupt ass legislation that would benefit enron in the short term? because that's all it would be. short term. enron was bullshit. it was going to fall apart eventually NO MATTER WHAT. if bush did everything in his power to sustain enron (and there is evidence that he did), it would buy the company at most a few more years. the bullshit faulty accounting was going to bite them in the ass at some point.

Whoever said mutual funds were "safe" is fucking dreaming. The brokers are running as big a scam as Enron, and that house of cards is not far from toppling.

What's in a mutual fund? Stocks like Enron, Kmart, Polaroid...oops!!

quote:

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Originally posted by TEARZ

you don't even know the half of who you might be talking to. seeking and i (as well as cracked) are well older than you.

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are you going to refute this at all!?!?!??!?!

Originally posted by TEARZ

read what was first posted from the nation or

i think you are putting a little too much confidence in the media by focusing on this nation article...

Originally posted by TEARZ

it's a bush AND enron corruption thing.

i never said it wasnt

Originally posted by TEARZ

familial

uhhhhhhhhhhhh... next quote.

Originally posted by TEARZ

he (and especially his family) helped build them from the start. in 94 he pressured the argentinian government to give enron a national pipeline deal down there

hm, ok, so your first chronological example of him building a 25 year old company comes from 1994... i will let you do the math. and, the bush family may have furthered enron's rise in texas... but, enron actually had a lot of strong ties and was built from a country called Natural Clean Fuels (based in omaha nebraska), but they may have left that out of your nation report... it looks as if my life long involvement with the company seemed to inform me better than your 3 page nation blurb. and, will you fucking realize i am not sticking up for enron.

Originally posted by TEARZ

enron was bullshit.

enron was the 6th largest country in the nation last year... you complain about me not reading your posts!? pasheesh!

enron fucked up big time, no doubt! but, it was convenient that bush got his part of the deal before enron fell out of power... who knows? bush may have passed state legislation for enron to stay "afloat" for a few more years just so they would be around to help his campaign.

why bother?

you win buddy. you "refuted" me.

BOOYAH! i am printing and framing that!

just kidding, i only have opinions. what the media says will never be fact to me. and, you said you were interested in hearing what i thought, well, i broke down what you said, and addressed it thoroughly... sorry, i was trying to debate. but, whatever. it is just opinions. no harm, no foul. nothing personal.

honestly dude, you didn't break down shit. i could cite hundreds of articles and government documents that detail the relationship between the bush family and enron, but since nothing the media says is fact to you, i guess it wouldn't mean shit. i gave you an example from 94- that was one of dubya's first favors to enron. i could cite shit back to the 70s, but again it wouldn't mean shit to you. hahaha, putting confidence in the media by reading the nation...right.

and when i say enron was bullshit, it was. it was bullshit that they were the 6th largest company in america last year. they were on paper, but they lied about their assets and concealed their massive debts thanks to their complicit accountants from arthur anderson. enron was a fraud as a whole. that's widely understood. that's my point. it's that fraud and mismanagement that brought them down, not bush. and i don't think you're defending enron.

and those enron execs that supported bush will still support him. he went the extra mile for them, and that's what you don't get. the execs know that, and i'm sure they'll hook him up lovely. i don't need to remind you that they weren't the ones that took a loss in this whole thing.

will a rational person please give me some back-up?

jeezus this is getting tedious.

the enron scandal is a nightmare..it is funny how a government which supposedly does not like to intervene in business matters...a laisez-faire attitude, has so many ties to the implosion of what was supposedly the 7th largest complany in the world..

the heads of the company knew it was in trouble and enlisted the government to try and help..thank you so much, Bush, for the deregulation of energy!! fuck! has this actually helped anylone? i saw recently that only 2.9 percent of utility buyers are actually able to choose an electricity provider..and look at deregulation in california...blackouts..

so it goes to show that the government stood to gain, the enron execs stood to gain, and the public was left to clean up the mess..

it is so funny what tina fey said on SNL..the republican scandals are far worse than what we've seen from the democrats recently, but they are so boring and hard to understand no one pays any attention..

CRACKED...i have to respond..the employees may have been naive..but lets not forget...people build 401k's based on reported earnings..enron lied about their earnings for 6 years..those people thought the company was doing well..since it is illegal to falsify that information...many 401k plans match employee contributions with company stock or funds.. so it can be difficult to properly diversify..then, when it was apparent the company was going under, employees were prohibited from selling their shares!! they could not dump the shit even when they knew they were losing everything..the corp heads knew what was up, and sold everything they had in the meantime..when they were done, there was nothing left for the employees..i hardly think that can be considered naivitee..they were misled by years of documents, that have now been shredded..let's face it, when a company is rated a certain way in the financial world, such as 7th lgst, we believe it because lying about that shit is illegal..i truly feel sorry for those people ..they got conned..

This is an interesting article that was printed in one of our local papers. It tends to be a little more independent and doesn't just rehash the same old lines. We were affected by the Enron scandal here in Portland since they purchased our main electrical utility. This is a huge hot topic here. But anyway this article is interesting in realizing how far the payoffs went.

The Nose

Rancid leftovers from Enron's trough.

BY THE NOSE

243-2122

The Nose swears on his mother's grave that he hasn't been tainted by the Enron scandal. No cash, no fruit basket, no holiday cards from Kenny-boy.

It's a bold statement to make because it appears everyone else was befriended by the now-bankrupt energy company. In Oregon alone, the line of those who got gifts from Enron is longer than the Sunday-morning wait for a table at the Original Pancake House on Barbur Boulevard.

Elected officials, of course, top the list. The boys from Texas proved looser with their wallets than a sailor at the Dancin' Bare, tossing wads of cash without regard to sex, race or party affiliation. In 2000 alone, $68,000 of Enron-related cash made its way to more than 80 candidates for the Oregon Legislature. And over the past few years, every single member of Oregon's congressional delegation has received Enron-related dough: Peter Defazio ($1,750), Darlene Hooley ($1,950), David Wu ($2,250), Greg Walden ($3,500), Ron Wyden ($4,000) Earl Blumenauer ($8,500) and Gordon Smith ($18,000). Smith's take was particularly embarrassing--he received more Enron cash than all but six members of the U.S Senate.

As the Enron hearings drag on up on the Hill, it will become clear how difficult it is to pin the quid to the quo of this donkey. For example, two years ago Wu and Hooley voted for one of many Enron-helpers that passed Congress--an amendment to the Commodity Exchange Act that exempted Enron from regulatory scrutiny. Was this a bit of political payback, or simply support for a larger appropriations bill?

It's not just elected officials who sidled up to the Enron oil-based buffet. When the company was wooing Portland General Electric, it offered a number of key employees windfalls if they were able to help smooth the purchase past the recalcitrant Oregon Public Utility Commission.

They did, and Enron made good: In the year 2000, PGE CEO Ken Harrison and treasurer Joseph Hirko cashed in their Enron stock options. Harrison walked away with $75 million. Hirko cleared a mere $35 million. A number of other PGE execs, including Peggy Fowler, Fred Miller, Don Kielblock, Alvin Alexanderson and Richard Dyer, received stock and options that, depending on when and if they were exercised, were worth in excess of $1 million for each.

Even the tofu crowd helped itself to the Enron smorgasbord. In February 1997, a coalition of environmental groups endorsed Enron's purchase of PGE. In return, Enron awarded them grants totaling $500,000, including $30,000 given to Northwest Environmental Advocates, $15,000 to Salmon Watch and $5,000 to American Rivers. The trail of cashed checks even leads to the door of the Citizens' Utility Board, which received $227,000 in 2000 for dropping a lawsuit and backing off its campaign for a statewide referendum on the closed Trojan nuclear power plant that would have cost Enron $300 million.

Would the Nose have liked a piece of this action? You bet. But now that the Enron collapse is the biggest scandal since the savings-and-loan crisis, the Beak will gladly take the high road.

What's scary about this is not that all these folks took money from a company that distorted the public process in the name of obscene--and ultimately, unsupportable--profits. What's scary is that if the boys from Texas hadn't been so gluttonous, they might just have pulled it off--and none of these folks would be looking at their old deposit slips with such embarrassment.

boom.

finally setting in

http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/01/25/enron.sui...cide/index.html

Former Enron executive dies in apparent suicide

SUGARLAND, Texas (CNN) -- The former vice chairman of Enron Corp. was found dead Friday, the victim of an apparent suicide, police in Sugarland, Texas, said.

John C. Baxter was found dead at 2:23 a.m., said Pat Whitte of the Sugarland Police.

"He was discovered inside a vehicle parked between two medians. A suicide note was found at the scene," Whitte said. "There was no sign of foul play. Inside his wallet was an ID indicating he was an employee of Enron."

The energy giant Enron Corp. has collapsed in the biggest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history, amid accusations of mishandling of funds and shredding of crucial documents. Enron and its accounting firm, Andersen LLP, are under congressional investigation.

The contents of the suicide note were not disclosed. Whitte did not say how Baxter died.

Baxter resigned in May of last year. At the time he was 42 years old. He joined Enron in 1991 and was chairman and CEO of Enron North America before being named chief strategy officer for Enron in June 2000 and vice chairman in October 2000.

He had remained as an Enron consultant.

A former vice president at Enron, Sherron Watkins, wrote to former Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay saying Baxter had been unhappy about Enron's dealings with one of its limited partnerships.

"Cliff Baxter complained mightily to (Enron CEO Jeff) Skilling and all who would listen about the inappropriateness of our transactions with LJM," the limited partnership.

Enron said in a statement that: "We are deeply saddened by the tragic loss of our friend and colleague Cliff Baxter. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family and friends."

the power of the dollar.

tearz..

well, looks like you and i are about the only ones who give a flying fuck...that motherfucker just killed himself.

can you believe this!??!

35 million dollars and he kills himself..what did this guy know?

about bush? cheney?

he must have been in really fucking deep...goes out for a drive, shoots himself in his car..my mind is blown..but i guess i'm really not that surprised..although they probably wouldn't spend that much time in jail, maybe they realized the injustices they pulled on thousands of innocent people and took a guilt trip into the great beyond...

this goes far beyond the enron board room and sinks into nearly every facet of out government..republican, democrat, independent interests..somehow all these people are involved and to blame..

i wonder if some of the other execs will take a cue from this moron..i saw some of the accounting firm people refusing to testify at the senate committee investigating this debacle..

beardo...check the enron thread

this is gonna keep getting deeper.

ah, good call. i'll just join this one up with that thread.