A CFO at a Fortune 500 could pal up with a hedge fund manager (for their major $$$) short their company's stock, create a panic, run it into the ground, and really kill the value of the stock. Billions of $$$. It would probably be easier than grossly exaggerating the value of the company and cooking the books. Plus the whole "I'm incompetent, please don't send my ass to jail" defense would probably work better. I heard someone on CNBC say they could be out in under 8 years? Ridiculous. Only problem with that plan is that you'd have to find a Fortune 500 with major dough, that is run by people as incompetent and crooked as Lay and Skilling. If anyone find's the setup, let me know. I'd be willing to do 8 to 10 in a medium security pen for a FEW HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS! My $0.02 for anyone who's actually sympathetic... Go voice your opinion at the top of your lungs on any street corner in Houston. You'll find out just how sympathetic all of the little people really are. Especially the ones who lost their entire retirements. (Not attacking you davidlynch2000) Thank GOD someone finally said it... Now lets all quit commenting on all the stuff we comment on here at ET. Turn off your browsers everyone, let us never return to the boards of ET. Because if we did and made a comment on something we weren't directly involved in, that would make us a little bit hypocritical wouldn't it?
"There is a whole other world out there that none of you are qualified to comment on...including myself..." In other words - "You just don't get it..." Hmmmm... heard that somewhere before..... As for making millions but wanting millions more - there's a point where it segues into power - knowing that you can do it and get away with it - not money. They probably saw Wall St as a shell game anyway, and felt they were just shell-gaming the shell-gamers. The "little-people" (employees among others) don't factor into that calculus. When do they ever? Get it?.....
I've always been confused as to why they thought they could get away with it. So they knew they would probably be in legal trouble, but thought they would probably get away on an innocent verdict, or at worst a very small penalty? I don't get how you can run a company into the ground on purpose and expect it to stay 'covered up' forever.
Thanks for bringing that up. I live in CA and am still amazed we managed to elect Arnold... Yes, IMO the voting public is f--king retarded. Lets do a little Q&A about the repercussions of Enron's actions: Q: Why did Davis get recalled out of office? A: Because CA had a 30 billion budget issue and the voters accused Davis of incompetence in balancing the budget. Q: Why did CA have a 30 billion budget "issue"? A: Because the population was in high demand for electricity during a time of low supply. Q: Why was there low supply? A: Because traders at Enron decided to create an artificial lack of supply so as to bolster profits for the Co. Q: Why is Enron allowed to "set" the supply of electricity, buy it, and then sell it to the consumer? Isn't that like letting the fox into the chicken coop? A: Well, yeah, because Mr. Bush and Mr. Lay we able to push a "deregulated energy market" tactic through congress. Q: WTF??? A: Yup... WTF... Davis asked for help from Bush regarding the energy crisis.. nothing happened.. I wonder why. As a side note, does anyone see any parallels here between the current oil market and the implied lack of supply our administration has created via an Iraqi war? I wonder how many friends our administration has in the oil business... nahhh.. couldn't be.. (heavy sarcasm here) I sure do trust that Mr. Bush wouldn't want to screw me for the sake of lining his pockets... nahhh, he's a good guy.. right???
"I've always been confused as to why they thought they could get away with it. " Hubris. People who "get to the top" can be the most psychologically dysfunctional because those are the traits that often get you there in the first place. Then you get the pump of being "the man" and having lackeys fawning over you. And by nature you are a "risk-taker" to get to the top. So that is what they did - take the "Big Risk" by gambling everything that they could BS their way through to the other side of the sewer pipe and come out "clean ". I think politics probably works the same way. Explains why we get the politicians that we do....
I didn't really want to post this because I might get yelled at and labelled mentally disabled or something of that sort, but I kinda felt I should say what I think... First though, I should say that IF Lay and Skilling did intentionally defraud people out of billions and knew what they were doing was in fact illegal, then they do deserve the maximum punishment possible. However, I think there is something wrong with our justice system because there is a possiblilty they may not have known, and they were convicted even though SUPPOSEDLY you have to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt in order to convict. I haven't been following the Enron story down to every detail, but from what I have read, a lot of the "structured financing" that Enron used to defraud investors was created by accountants from major investment/accounting firms. If you are a CEO who is not an expert in law or accounting, you might take the advice of your accountants without necessarily knowing whether their advice is within the rules or not. And supposedly, Lay and Skilling did consult their lawyers when employees brought up concerns, and the lawyers told them everything was legal. These guys may not have known that what they were doing was illegal. If you're not an expert in law, then you consult your lawyers - that's really the best you can do...and their lawyers told them that everything was fine - it is possible that they were duped or simply got bad advice and are now paying the price. I'm not saying that is what happened, but just that there's a possiblity. But more importantly, what the jurors based their decisions on is a bit disturbing. First, there is no hard evidence that Lay and Skilling ordered any fraud. If you listen to reporting on the trial, various analysts say that the jurors have to weigh the prosecution witnesses' words against Lay and Skilling's. So the jurors aren't weighing EVIDENCE, but merely making a decision based on who they THINK is lying?? How many of the jurors do you think are experts in lie detection? In an interview after the verdict, one juror said that one factor in judging Lay was that Lay seemed arrogant on the stand. This implies that if he had acted more humbly, it MAY have tipped the scales the other way. How Lay acts today could not possibly change whether his actions were right or wrong in the past, yet the way he acts today could change his verdict? So whatever his actions were in the past, he might have gotten a guilty verdict...but he could have possibly gotten the opposite.....if only he had put on a more agreeable show on the stand...!! Whatever happened to judging someone based on actual evidence and their actual actions?! Maybe Lay and Skilling got what they deserve, I don't know. I guess they PROBABLY deserve it. Probably. The real tragedy is that our justice system will convict people based on some sort of opinion rather than hard evidence. To hell with proving things beyond reasonable doubt - "probably" seems to be good enough! Having said all this though, I believe if they are actually guilty, then they should rot in hell! If they have been wrongly convicted though, there's no DNA evidence to exonerate them.
Exactly, the reason that Lay and Skilling are arrested and charged, is to keep the masses happy; that no-one is above the law. The morons crossed the line and in doing so, they threatened the whole system and so have to be made examples of. Think the Knights Templar.