You must be a world cup referee if you didn't see that ron's comment was directed at 4matic's post above his. Red card yourself son.Quote:
Originally Posted by Referee
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You must be a world cup referee if you didn't see that ron's comment was directed at 4matic's post above his. Red card yourself son.Quote:
Originally Posted by Referee
I highly, HIGHLY recommend reading "The Smartest Men in the Room" to anyone who hasn't already done so, especially if you think that there was some sort of govornment conspiracy that allowed Enron to happen in the first place (also available on DVD for those who lack the attention span - the book is pretty heady in spots). Yes, the Enron gang contributed heavily to political campeigns. Not surprizingly the majority was to the GOP, and that amount was (again not surprizingly) heavily weighted to candidates in TX. The conspiracy ends there though - Enron was started in '89 and grew rapidly through the Clinton administration. The only people who knew what Enron was doing was the top level crooks in Enron. Lay, Skilling, Pai, Causey, et. al. - noone else. The Frat-boy mentality in both Enron and Andersen contributed heavily, as did the bad-ass, egotistical attititude in Houston. We were all their tools - the residents in CA, WA and OR, the rank-and-file Enron employees, anyone who bought Enron stock, even the accountants @ Andersen were fooled (though they should have known better and paid for it). Pisses me off Kenny boy died before he could get what was coming to him.
FYI, my wife worked @ AC out of college until she hit the glass ceiling (only frat boys make partner there), my dad worked for the broadband division in the final year of Enron (luckily lost more on the house they bought than the Enron stock they owned - mostly because it was so damn obvious what was happening to anyone who hadn't gulped the Enron Cool-Aid at that point). It didn't surprize me in the least when the house-of-cards fell.
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Originally Posted by TJ.Brk
pffffft....dude....those guys had / have money hidden in places around the world that you and I don't have a clue about. I mean, that is what they perfected, right? Moving money around real fast and slick, on a worldwide computer network. And a lot more than 6 mil. That was probably just a decoy.
How do you think OJ is still living reasonably well? He makes a lot of visits to the Carribean, laying low. He had smart lawyers.
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Originally Posted by 4matic
I agree. You have to remeber that Enron stock tripled over a couple years. So when someone says they lost a million, they are talking about the high water mark. They probably put in much much less. Thats the risk/reward when you put all your dough on one pony.
Of all the people who lost they're ass in enron stock, the employee's are the last ones to feel sorry for. Shareholders outside the company knew less about Enron's shift to high risk trading vs. more conservative energy trading, and many of them took part in the window dressing, or knew of it before the collapse. The outside investor had no chance.
Enron- What do you expect froma bunch of f#@king Texans!
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Originally Posted by splat
just wondering if you have the same problem with Op-Ed columnists that were on Enron's payroll. Apparently if he had been in congress he'd rank third in monies taken in from Enron. Who is he, you ask?
one Paul Krugman. He refers to the current administration in many different derisive ways. One of which I particularly love "The People Enron put in the White House." Ironic, no?
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Originally Posted by Cono Este
Oh, no no no. Au contraire, sir. And I talk from personal experience, since I worked for a major corporation whose stock lost a lot of value at the same time as the Enron crash (high tech / media / bullshit merger). For years my match in the 401k plan, and also profit sharing contributions, were given to me in company stock, and these funds were locked. I was unable to do anything with that nice little sum until I was 55. But, coincidentally, we received a memo at the time that Enron was collapsing that told us that all funds in our plans were now "liquid", and we could do what we wanted with them - after I lost 70% of the value of my 401k form the high water mark. Now, yeah, it was pretty cool to watch that money fly in the late nineties, but, needless to say, a bit disturbing to watch it crash around 99-2000, and I couldn't do a thing. And at the same time, executives of my corporation were making big bucks selling options and cashing in early on the worst merger in history. Those same executives are still in power. Probably out in the Hampstons this weekend playing at Shennecock. Driving one of those cool new Porsche Caymans. Ogling the trophy wife at the pool.
I'm not sure what the situation was for the Enron employees, but, yeah, I agree with you that they certainly weren't immune from greed themselves. High on the list of investment rules is not to be invested heavily in your company stock, and many were out of choice. But the poor suckers who really got nailed were the long term employees of the old school utilities that company bought. Talk about a stable investment - utilities - and those men and women saw their retirement savings evaporate and didn't have a clue. 30-40 year linemen who didn't know what Enron was just a year before.
Outside investors walked into this situation with free will, and a lot of greed. I don't feel bad for them at all.
How do you lose 70% when only your matching and profit sharing were in company stock? Since the Nasdaq Index lost 60% of it's value in the bear market losses of 70% including your company stock would not be unreasonable depending on your allocation.Quote:
Originally Posted by Benny Profane
The long term employees who had there PGE stock (and others) converted to Enron stock definately lost it all but they did have the opportnity to get out and many were advised by the plan administrators to diversify.
Outside investors bought into Enron based on lies and deception. They are not as culpable becuaser they paid for their investment.
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Originally Posted by 4matic
And 20 - 30 years of work isn't a form of "payment"? It's as though you imply they got it for free. We're talking about secretaries and mail clerks here, not just frat boy asshole VP's.
just watched a video on Enron in my macroeconomics class and I was frickin blown away. they had taped phone conversations of the energy traders calling the powerplants in California telling them to shut the plant down to jack up the price/kw to get the power back on. The sheer arrogance of these guys just shutting down power to hospitals, traffic lights, nursing homes, people's homes, businesses.....just incredible.
Skilling agreed to join Enron only if they used "mark to market" accounting, which I don't fully understand but it sounded like...
I work for Enron
you and I make a deal for let's say 50 million dollars
I start spending the 50 million that Enron is forecasted to bring in immediately without any profits or acutal money from the deal coming in.
I'm certainly not an accountant or a power executive but spending the money before you got it ain't smart.
It's interesting though that you can get thrown in a federal pound-me-in-the-ass penetentiary for dealing some pot but if you fuck over thousands of people's retirements and the entire state of California, you basically go to prison on Nantucket to work on your tan.
I agree that corporations should not give restricted compensation in retirement plans.Quote:
Originally Posted by Benny Profane
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Originally Posted by Benny Profane
Good point, I agree with you about the smaller utilities they gobbled up. Remember that Wyoming Utility corp.? They sold off everything and bought into the broadband network? Goldman earned a billion in commish while the comapny flopped. Those employee's got screwed. From low risk, to the very highest.
My point, and cj100 posted a good article around here once about Enron, is that those employee's were punished harder than most, because in the end their company was a fraud. And many of them were aware that not all was kosher. The story i know of was, that they would staff the trading desk's with secretaries when VIP's were on tour of the office's. Make it look bigger and better than it was.
Mark to Market means they use the last traded price of soemthing for the books. So you can have an enormous position and mark it up/down on the close with a single contract. In energy futures, there is not much liquidity, so these guys can "paint the tape" so to speak, anywhere they want to.Quote:
Originally Posted by vinzclortho
It happens alot.
My point is that it's just not that easy to "leave and find a different job." One day you'll understand.
Something by Krugman for the edification of Gyptian, who's still too busy taking the conserva-blogs as Gospel:
MY CONNECTION WITH ENRON, ONE MORE TIME
SYNOPSIS: If you had any questions about Krugman in this diminishing non-scandal, this piece should answer them
I really didn't want to say any more about the Enron advisory board issue - I've already posted quite a lot of information here . I don't have anything to hide, but my job at the New York Times is to write about real issues, not myself. Still, the story keeps popping up.
Let me give the people bringing this up the benefit of the doubt, and suppose that they really are concerned about journalistic ethics. That's certainly a valid subject. It's important that a national publication like the New York Times insist that its journalists be free from conflicts of interest; kudos to my employers for their strict rules, which insist that writers be free from anything that might raise questions - rules that I have followed from the moment I joined the Times. It's also important for a journalist to disclose previous connections where they are relevant - which I have.
But somehow this keeps shifting from a real discussion of journalistic ethics, the guidelines that publications should adopt and that writers should follow, to a prurient fascination with other peoples' paychecks. If that's all that it's about, then it's tabloid journalism, not a real attempt to grapple with the issue.
Lately I find myself presumed guilty of an ethics violation simply because I was paid for my time. All that anyone wants to talk about is $50,000 (which turns out to be wrong - see below). There is such a thing as earning money honestly; if you want to challenge a journalist's ethics, you have to ask not how much he was paid but when, for what, and whether it distorted his writing. It's particularly important to get the context right when the person in question had a successful non-journalistic career before he went into journalism - which I did.
Too much of what I read about myself doesn't get even the most basic facts right. Critics imply, falsely, that I received money from Enron as a New York Times columnist - that I was receiving a bribe because of a prominent journalistic position that I did not in fact have at the time (unlike the other journalists who have served on that board, who held the same jobs then that they do today). They don't acknowledge that I disclosed my connection almost three years ago, and again a year ago. And they don't acknowledge that I have been criticizing Enron since January 2001, long before everyone else started bashing the company.
By all means let's have a discussion about journalistic ethics; Enron has made us all a lot more conscious of ethical issues involving business. But a game of gotcha, in which anyone who received money from Enron is lumped in with the genuine malefactors in this story, does nothing to improve journalistic integrity - on the contrary, it's counterproductive.
To make it easier for anyone who is still interested in this story to get the facts right, here are some frequently asked questions about my role on the Enron advisory board, with answers.
1. What did I do? In early 1999 I was asked to serve on a panel that offered Enron executives briefings on economic and political issues. As far as I knew at the time, they genuinely wanted to learn something. I resigned from that board in the fall of 1999, when I accepted an offer to write for the New York Times.
2. What was I paid? It turns out that I was actually paid $37,500 - the last quarterly payment did not take place, because of my early resignation from the board.
3. Was this exorbitant? It didn't seem so at the time. In 1998-1999 my normal fee for a one-hour business speech in Boston or New York was $20,000 - more if the speech involved long-distance travel. The Enron board required that I spend 4 days in Houston. So the sum they offered didn't seem out of line - if anything it seemed rather low compared with my usual rates.
4. Was I being paid off because I was a journalist? That Enron board, when I was on it, did not strike me as a board of pundits. It included Larry Lindsey and Bob Zoellick - future Bush administration officials, though I had no way of knowing that, but certainly not journalists. It also included Pankaj Ghemawat, a strategy professor at Harvard, and Irwin Stelzer, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute. (Stelzer had a column in the London Times, but I didn't know that) The only person there I thought of as a journalist was William Kristol - I thought he was there to regale us with Washington gossip. And I regarded myself as being in the same category as Ghemawat - an academic expert, who was there because of his expertise.
An amazing number of people seem to think that I was paid by Enron while working for the Times. I wasn't - when Enron approached me there was no hint that a Times connection lay in my future. As soon as I shook hands with the Times, I resigned from that board.
I did write monthly columns for two magazines in 1999, but I would not have described myself as a journalist - no more so than, say, Laura Tyson, Robert Barro, or or Gary Becker, respected economists who write monthly columns for Business Week. I wrote a monthly column for Fortune; that column was neither a major commitment of time nor a major source of income. I also wrote a monthly column, for very little money, for Slate. My main sources of income were teaching, consulting, and business speaking.
5. Did I disclose my connection? Yes. I reported it the one time I mentioned Enron in Fortune, almost three years ago. I reported it again the first time I mentioned Enron in the New York Times, in a highly critical article more than a year ago. I didn't say that I was paid to serve on the board, but I thought that was obvious: who volunteers his services to for-profit corporations?
One point that seems to have been missed in all the mud-slinging: I was the only member of the board to declare my connection voluntarily. Lindsey and Zoellick, as government officials, were required to disclose their consulting; none of the other members uttered a peep before the January 2002 New York Times article about the board.
6. Should I have disclosed the sum of money I received? I have always understood that when writing about someone you disclose the fact of a potential conflict of interest, not the financial details. If I had disclosed the sum back in January 2001, when I first wrote about Enron for the New York Times, it would have sounded strange - I'm sure people would have accused me of bragging.
7. Did the payment from Enron cause me to write anything I would not have written otherwise? No. Some people seem to think that because I had nice things to say about Enron's energy trading in a Fortune article - in which I disclosed my connection - I was being out of character. But I have always been a free-market Keynesian: I like free markets, but I want some government supervision to correct market failures and ensure stability. Some of my pro-market Slate pieces enraged people on the left - check out The accidental theorist , or In praise of cheap labor . My Fortune piece about the rise of markets, illustrated by Enron's energy trading, was an attempt to take a sunshine break from the dark pieces I had been writing about the Asian crisis; it was also a favor to my editors, who devoted that issue to e-business. It wasn't at all out of character. In fact, the next column I wrote for Fortune was also a pro-market piece, with kind words for Milton Friedman and Margaret Thatcher.
8. Was Enron trying to buy my soul? That's for them to answer. But I wasn't selling.
Actually, it was in reference to the Elvis line of reasoning and the coincidental timing that I had cnn.com on my comp screen with Lay's ugly mug on it.Quote:
Originally Posted by iceman
But I always appreciate support from the iceman.
Oh, I was under the impression that everyone that had ever come in contact with Enron was a part of some nefarious plot to defraud the American public.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dexter Rutecki
So you mean that there are people that had been on Enron's payroll can maintain an objective stance?
FWIW, Paul Krugman is an academic fraud and his reputation amongst those in the know is pretty much nil.
He is, however, an effective firebrand for the left.
You're right, the only way to get a balanced view of the world such as your own is discounting literature from camps who disagree with you :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Rontele
edg
I would consider myself a liberal. I think his outlandish op/ed pieces in the Times are bad for the liberal cause. But then again, I am much more of a pragmatist than Krugman. He should have stuck to his guns, which dealt with international banking, a field where he still has credibility. The minute he stepped into politics, he got well outside of wheelhouse.Quote:
Originally Posted by edg
Page top bitches.
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Originally Posted by Tippster
And the stock should be trading at 80 again, the govt should tender an offer to all the ex employee's. PLease, give me a break. Shed a tear for those companies whose stock went to zero without breaking the law. I am sure they could have kept those jobs without maxing out the profit plan. And I am talking about the Enron employee's, not the aquisitions they made.
And you would be surprised what i do know Tip.
edit:
I guess the real reason I do not feel to sorry for them, is because i made markets in Enron options and saw most of the people in my pit go belly up selling puts and collars to all the insiders before it collapsed. As a part of they're responsibility as mm's those people had to sell them, the employee's could have left, or not bought so much stock (or puts). Will those millions be returned? No, and I dont expect my losses, even though it was a result of a massive fraud, to be returned. Life sucks that way.
I see. All the Enron Employees who lost their life savings were people in high-risk jobs (trading) and were young, single, and educated in how to best manage ones retirement portfolio, which they considered while sitting on a chairlift at some mountain resort pursuing a sport whose gear costs more than the average Washer/Dryer. Certainly none were blue collar folks with families to house and feed, schools to pay for, and car payments to worry about. Then maybe, MAYBE, they could go on a trip once a year to someplace cheap and call it a vacation.
It all makes sense to me now. Those fucking morons.
All I am saying wise guy, is that there are better candidates for your sympathy. Lets put some people on TV who did'nt actually work at the house of Fraud. There are plenty of them. This reacurring, "I made a million in stock, then lost it working at Enron" is an insult to the people who lost they're ass without actually working there. They are the last to recieve my sympathy,but that does not mean some of them do not qualify for any.
If your stockbroker ran off with all his clients money (like yours), would we put his secretary on tv for being without a job now? No, i think there would be better candidates, and you might, just might not cry very hard for her. Thats just a guess though.
And my kids get the new gear now. I am still in Marmot circa 1999.
brokers like you whining? You guys are so much more important than the little people :rolleyes:Quote:
Originally Posted by Cono Este
Your an asshole, but we already knew that, and you obviously know very little about what I did, or how I was effected by this scandal. You yourself posted a good article detailing how elaborate and widespread the fraud was within the company. I worked with good people, with families, who lost a lifetime worth of work to that fraud. They had no chance at all compared to the people within those walls.
Keep whining about those Enron employee's, its hilarious. Many, many more of them belong behond bars. :fuckyou:
ps I am not a broker, get a clue.
They couldn't diversify risk either? Boo fucking hoo - somebody else got burned trying to make a buck. In any fraud or crime their are plenty of 'victims' - picking and choosing which ones had it worse is stupid.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cono Este
I've always thought of the whole stockmarket as a fraud, just another way to bilk the poor, ignorant masses of their money.
and now for the edit:
If you really wanted to understand where this type of remark might come from, you can use google to search a zillion supportive articles.
But, as usual, none of the opponenets of such a remark would want to actually try that. It might cause them to work or think.
So, like the people that put all their savings in Enron stock, some people hedged their whole career on the success of Enron? I don't understand why we're supposed to feel worse for someone like this than someone that worked at Enron and wasn't part of the scandal and didn't know about it. How did they have more control of how the scandal affected them vs. the people you're talking about?Quote:
Originally Posted by Cono Este
No, they could not. They were the primary market makers in Enron options. Puts and Calls. If they refused to make a market in those puts, when everyone and their mother came to buy them, then an exchange official would assign the trade to them. The result was they (we) became net short millions of puts. Which gives people the right to sell of stock at a specific price at a specified time. The puts dont materliaze out of thin air, we sold them (shorted them). A risky job I admit, but in a fraud scandal, we were the last to know, and nobody halted trading in that pig until it had dropped 50 dollars. Sometimes 10 bucks a clip over night. Pinch me, I should have been a doctor.Quote:
Originally Posted by cj001f
Needless to say, all those people knew something non public and many of them had tips from within the company, big mouths if not insiders or wall street whores.
I am not whinning, but dont expect me to feel sorry for all those people that helped to create that nightmare.
The victims are fucking clear, if you want to guess which employee's talked too much, or posed as traders, or stacked those million dolar empty server boxes to show off, you go ahead, but i dont care for it.
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Originally Posted by Buster Highmen
Talk to the Dutch.
curious, why do you say that?Quote:
Originally Posted by Buster Highmen
About tulips. Or Americans about trains or so called tech stocks.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cono Este
Relax. There are those who understand your point(s). Try to understand theirs.
that's the lottery.Quote:
Originally Posted by Buster Highmen
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Originally Posted by Buster Highmen
Tell that to Mark Cuban. Or even Bill Gates. Some people just get lucky. And over time, it's still the best investment. But, yeah, I agree, it's a fucking den of snakes.
I'd like to have a buck for every time an insider tip is passed over martinis this weekend out at the Hamptons or Nantucket.
After explaining my personal experience to you, I have decided that if you still do not comprehend what it is I tried explaining to you, then this is clearly above your head, but if you did understand then you must be void of any eithics and or morals.Quote:
Originally Posted by cj001f
Amen. And its getting worse.Quote:
Originally Posted by Buster Highmen
Popular delusions and the Madness of CrowdsQuote:
Originally Posted by LeeLau
If you guys have somewhere better to put your money by all means fill us in on the secret......Quote:
Originally Posted by LeeLau
REITs, income paying instruments, some beaten down stocks at the present but these are "boring" non-sexy investments and TGR is hardly the place to debate investment philosophies.Quote:
Originally Posted by CUBUCK
Fooled by Randomness - Nassim Nicholas TalebQuote:
Originally Posted by cj001f