Today is day 925.

[Dinner]

925 days have passed since the Enron scandal broke and as of today not a single person has been charged for wrong doing. Not Bush's pal Ken, not anyone on the board of directors, not anyone any where has been punished except for the million of pensioners who were defrauded, the employees who lost their jobs and retirement savings (which Ken Lay mandated had to be invested in Enron stock), and the consumers of California who lwere bilked billions due to Enron's fraud.

HERE is a great web site detailing the scandal and Bush's envolvement with it. Everything is there from the millions Lay gave Bush (Wasn't it nice of Ken Lay to write out a list of legislation he wanted passed in the same letter he gave Bush a seven figure check?), to Cheney's secret closed door "Energy Meetings" which he held with Enron excutives, to the Justice Department's lame excuses as to why they haven't actually charged anyone with anything (They just haven't had enough time to review the evidience. 925 days isn't enough? ).

I just thought I'd point this out so we can all reflect how big money can buy a President and how that President's administration can protect his friend's (like Ken Lay) from being charged for their crimes.

[Spiffor]

I can't get why people are so little worried about that. Corporate America has robbed millions of people (and especially robbed those who have lost all their retirement funds), and they get away with it without trouble. The admin's involvement in this whitewash is obvious, yet only the usual suspects (Sava, Che) ***** about it

Let's just hope your next president will have justice be made, will have Ken Lay and his cronies stripped, and their money given back to Enron employees

[MrFun]

My sympathies go with the lower-level employees who were kept in the dark by their superiors.

bastards

[Dinner]

Here are a few salient details about Enron:

Enron at a Glance

-Enron began in 1985 as a traditional energy producer/seller.

-By the early 1990s Enron wanted to branch off into trading energy futures and derivatives. This wish was granted by Wendy Gramm, who George H. Bush had appointed to head the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Her husband, Texas Senator Phil Gramm furthered Enron's wishes by removing virtually all regulatory oversight over Enron's trading.

-With the right to trade these nearly metaphysical derivatives Enron decided it was easier to cheat than play by the rules. Rather than letting the free market decide energy future prices Enron set up nearly 3000 offshore companies, many of which they treated as partnerships.

-These offshore companies provided Enron with the perfect ruse to manipulate energy prices and, at the same time, hide its own debts.

-When states like California came to Enron to lock in energy contracts Enron would show them contracts it had signed with its "partnerships" offshore locking in contracts at increasingly astronomical prices. Faced with what appeared to be legitimate contracts with others, Enron's customers had no choice but to submit to Enron's extortive energy prices.

-Now that it could circumvent the magic of the marketplace and set its own price for energy, Enron executives saw no end to the possibilities for its offshore entities. By transferring its obligations to some of the these shell companies they were able to show Wall Street profits when in fact the company was being looted into insolvency by its top managers.

-When their Texas friend, George W. Bush, won the White House Enron's CEO, Kenneth Lay, saw the possibility of extending Enron's giant Ponzi scheme well into the future. Lay was appointed to the Bush transition team where he worked directly with Vice President Cheney to develop the administration's national energy policies.

-No fewer than 52 former Enron executive, lobbyists, lawyers or significant shareholders ended up working for the Bush administration.

-It was only when an uncontrollable meltdown of Enron's scheme began in December 2001 that the world learned that Enron's apparent success had been little more than a complex illusion.

-Within days of Enron's bankruptcy California's energy prices returned to normal levels -convincing proof that Enron had successfully distorted national energy market prices. (It is now being learned that other energy companies, such as El Paso Natural Gas, may have participated in the scheme by actually withholding energy from the market.)

-But, before Enron collapsed insiders, like Kenneth Lay, dumped over 16 million shares of Enron stock pocketing over $1 billion in profits.

-When Enron failed its 15,000 employees learned they had lost $1 billion in pension funds.

[Dinner]

The Meltdown


12/2000
Enron announces that president and chief operating officer Jeffrey Skilling will take over as chief executive in February. Kenneth Lay remains as chairman. Shares hit 52-week high of $84.87 on Dec. 28.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

4/17/2001
Ken Lay and Vice President Cheney meet to discuss energy policy.

8/14/2001
Skilling abruptly resigns after running the company for just six months; Lay becomes CEO again.

8/14 & 27/2001
In a pair of emails to his employees, Lay touts the company's stock and declares that Enron's growth "has never been more certain."

8/15/2001
Sherron Watkins, a vice president of corporate development, writes a memo to Ken Lay expressing concern that the company will "implode in a wave of accounting scandals."

9/17/2001
Skilling sells 500 shares. As of the end of July, Lay has sold shares worth $21 million in 2001 alone.

9/26/2001
Lay tells employees that Enron stock is an "incredible bargain" and will rise in value by 800 percent over the next 10 years.

10/16/2001
Enron reports a $638 million third?quarter loss and discloses a $1.2 billion reduction in shareholder equity, partly related to partnerships run by chief financial officer Andrew Fastow.

10/24/2001
Enron ousts Fastow.

10/28-29/2001
Lay talks to Treasury Secretary O'Neill and Commerce Secretary Evans about Enron's problems. The Cabinet members decide not to intervene.

10/31/2001
Enron announces the SEC formal investigation into a possible conflict of interest related to the company's dealings with the partnerships.

11/8/2001
Enron files documents with SEC revising its financial statements for past five years taking away $586 million in profits and adding another $2.5 billion in debt to its books.

11/28/2001
Dynegy backs out of proposed deal to buy Enron after Enron's credit rating is downgraded to junk bond status. Enron shares plunge below $1.

12/2/2001
Enron files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, the biggest bankruptcy petition in U.S. history.

12/3/2001
Enron fires more than 4,000 of its US employees. That same week, it fires more than 1,000 European employees.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1/9-10/2002
Justice Department confirms it has begun a criminal investigation of Enron. The company's auditor, Arthur Andersen LLP, says it has destroyed some Enron documents. The White House discloses Lay sought the administration's help shortly before the company collapsed. Attorney General John Ashcroft, who received campaign funds from the company for his 2000 Senate race, recuses himself from the investigation.

1/19/2002
The White House acknowledges that Vice President **** Cheney tried to help Enron secure payment last year on a $64 million?dollar debt owed to it by a large Indian energy project.

1/30/2002
The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, vows to sue to obtain documents that may show Enron's influence on the Bush administration's energy policy, after the White House claims the papers are privileged.

2/2/2002
A special investigative committee set up by Enron's board of directors reports that an elaborate scheme involving multiple partnerships allowed top Enron executives to inflate earnings by nearly one billion dollars and pocket millions in the process.

2/4/2002
Lay resigns from Enron's board.

3/14/2002
Enron accounting firm Arthur Andersen is indicted by a federal grand jury for obstruction of justice charges for "knowingly, intentionally and corruptly" persuading employees to shred Enron?related documents last October.

3/15/2002
The U.S. government suspends new business dealings with Enron and its former accounting firm Andersen, citing evidence of misconduct by the former energy giant and the criminal indictment of the auditor.

[MichaeltheGreat]

We all know our politicians are bought and paid for whores of corporate interests. That surprises you?

As far as Enron and this bubble goes, and punishments, etc., the entire marketplace would like to forget about it, and pretend that it can never happen again. Every market crash must have one person to take the blame, so Martha will be the one this time to get on the cross for everyone's market sins, then it'll be back to business as usual.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
We all know our politicians are bought and paid for whores of corporate interests. That surprises you?

No but it pisses me off. Why doesn't it piss you off?

Of course the thing I'm pissed off most about is that they can defraud people out of billions, they can buy politicians, then the corrupt politicians protect the guilty, and no one cares.

Bush was as thick as theives with the Eron execs (he still employs 52 of them to this day on his staff) and no one cares. It was the single largest bankruptcy and fraud case in the history of the United States and yet no one has gone to jail and the people who commited this crime got to keep 90% of there ill gotten gains.

[SuperSneak]

I lost my great job due to the Enron debacle, and the lack of any justice for their wrongdoing is a very disturbing situation to me...it really sends a pisspoor message to the citizens of this country and this world.
Very, very bad business.

[Lefty Scaevola]

Theses type of prosecution (SEC and coporate governace) are EXTREMELY difficult and resource using to investigate and prosecute. They take a lot of time to find and assemble evidence and interview many more witness that street crimes. They are very hard to prove. One such prosecution likely take 100 to 1000 times the amount of investigation and prosecutorial work as a street crime. They do not come quick, cheap, or easy, and have a high failure rate.

[Dinner]

After nearly three years that excuse is starting to wear thin for me.

[Lefty Scaevola]

It usually take 1 year or more to bring a street crime to trial, which has a fraction of the complexity. It aint an excuse, its a function of the evidence that is needed.
What the hell would you know of prosecution? Commoly in the SEC or coporate cases there will not be iditments until shortly before the staute of limitations runs out,, and then the prosecutor is still unprepared and racing to complete an investigation.

[Sava]

one wonders if I have hijacked Oerdin's account...

[chequita guevara]

I am taking applications for the Socialist Party of the US. Just thought you might like to know, Oerdin.

[Sava]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
I am taking applications for the Socialist Party of the US. Just thought you might like to know, Oerdin.

if you want to make any progress politically, I wouldn't suggest using the words "socialist", "communist", or "marx" anywhere.

You commies might have some ideas I agree with, but you guys sure are in the dark politically...

[Lefty Scaevola]

In any case your premises of this thread are mutiply false. Beside the 925 day figure (its been less than two years since it tanked) I can recall two officers convicted (guilty pleas) Kopper and Belding (sp?) and more, including Fastow, indited.

a write up for 2002 on prosecution prospects:


"Despite some recent success in corporate fraud cases, prosecutors must overcome daunting hurdles, including changes in federal regulation of insider trading, the vagaries of securities law and the sometimes conflicting agenda of congressional investigators, according to law professors, attorneys who specialize in white-collar crime and law enforcement officials.
Evidence that Enron destroyed documents related to the company's meteoric collapse offers the most compelling prospect for a criminal case, suggesting possible obstruction of justice charges, legal experts and law enforcement officials agree.
But it could take years for authorities to build more serious charges of conspiracy, insider trading or securities fraud against Enron's higher-ups, and even then it may prove tough to return convictions, experts predicted.
"Financial fraud cases are very hard to prove. [Executives] can say they made bad business judgments, but you have to prove unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt that they deliberately intended to deceive" the public and their shareholders about the company's finances, said Columbia University law professor Jeffrey N. Gordon."