I really enjoy these posts. Its interesting to see how diverse traders are once you get them away from trading. Peter and Chasinfla are both Christian types, judging by their posts, (they both quote scripture) yet they don't agree on much once you get them off trading. Peter makes a good point on communists. Castro had been there 40 years, and has never done anything to us. We don't have to agree with Cuba's governing style, just as we don't agree with China's, but maybe it is time to quit calling them enemies and treating them like dirt with our embargo etc. Just think of the chaos Cuba could have caused if they really were our ememies. They are just 90 miles off our coast, and could anyone actually spot a Cuban terroirst in our population of tens of millions of loyal Americans of Hispanic origin?
This statement I agree with wholeheartedly. What I would like to know is how did Chasinfla get a time machine and warp him/herself from 1951 to now.
No - It's about LEADERSHIP. Remember it was W. who swore to return "integrity to the Whitehouse! What a laugh! Have a read: But Mr. Bush and Mr. Pitt say they are outraged about WorldCom. Representative Michael Oxley, the Republican chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, played a key role in passing a 1995 law (over Mr. Clinton's veto) that, by blocking investor lawsuits, may have opened the door for a wave of corporate crime. More recently, when Merrill Lynch admitted having pushed stocks that its analysts privately considered worthless, Mr. Oxley was furious â not because the company had misled investors, but because it had agreed to pay a fine, possibly setting a precedent. But he also says he is outraged about WorldCom. Might this sudden outbreak of moral clarity have something to do with polls showing mounting public dismay over crooked corporations? Still, even a poll-induced epiphany is welcome. But it probably isn't genuine. As the Web site dailyenron.com put it, last week "the foxes assured Americans that they are hot on the trail of those missing chickens." The president's supposed anger was particularly hard to take seriously. As Chuck Lewis of the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity delicately put it, Mr. Bush "has more familiarity with troubled energy companies and accounting irregularities than probably any previous chief executive." Mr. Lewis was referring to the saga of Harken Energy, which now truly deserves a public airing. My last column, describing techniques of corporate fraud, omitted one method also favored by Enron: the fictitious asset sale. Returning to the ice-cream store, what you do is sell your old delivery van to XYZ Corporation for an outlandish price, and claim the capital gain as a profit. But the transaction is a sham: XYZ Corporation is actually you under another name. Before investors figure this out, however, you can sell a lot of stock at artificially high prices. Now to the story of Harken Energy, as reported in The Wall Street Journal on March 4. In 1989 Mr. Bush was on the board of directors and audit committee of Harken. He acquired that position, along with a lot of company stock, when Harken paid $2 million for Spectrum 7, a tiny, money-losing energy company with large debts of which Mr. Bush was C.E.O. Explaining what it was buying, Harken's founder said, "His name was George Bush." Unfortunately, Harken was also losing money hand over fist. But in 1989 the company managed to hide most of those losses with the profits it reported from selling a subsidiary, Aloha Petroleum, at a high price. Who bought Aloha? A group of Harken insiders, who got most of the money for the purchase by borrowing from Harken itself. Eventually the Securities and Exchange Commission ruled that this was a phony transaction, and forced the company to restate its 1989 earnings. But long before that ruling â though only a few weeks before bad news that could not be concealed caused Harken's shares to tumble â Mr. Bush sold off two-thirds of his stake, for $848,000. Just for the record, that's about four times bigger than the sale that has Martha Stewart in hot water. Oddly, though the law requires prompt disclosure of insider sales, he neglected to inform the S.E.C. about this transaction until 34 weeks had passed. An internal S.E.C. memorandum concluded that he had broken the law, but no charges were filed. This, everyone insists, had nothing to do with the fact that his father was president. -Excerpt from Paul Krugman, NYTimes 7/2/02 BTW - Krugman received his B.A. from Yale University in 1974 and his Ph.D. from MIT in 1977. He has taught at Yale, MIT and Stanford.
tatertrader, I believe that is a TKO. http://www.public-i.org/story_01_100400.htm http://www.thedailyenron.com/documents/20020307061926-97282.asp http://www.americanfreepress.net/10...orge_W__B/bush___bin_laden_-_george_w__b.html And for the really paranoid: http://www.worldmessenger.20m.com/messengerevil.html
LOL...apparently you didn't go to yale. true story - a guy going to community college, sporting around a 2.5GPA decided it would be worth his effort to apply as a transfer to yale. so he faked transcripts and recommendations and was accepted as a transfer. he spent about a year there, earning a high B / low B+ (slightly above 3.0GPA) gradepoint before someone found out and ratted him out. ...and W could only earn C's....
The people who started the Boston Tea Party said many similar things. I don't know if the word "sucks" was used then like it is now, but I'm sure there were statements by our founders that had the same exact meaning as "America Sucks."
whoa whoa whoa.... clinton earned (yes, EARNED - do not read "Daddy gave it to him") a Rhodes Scholarship and studied in the UK. As did many foreign leaders in the US and abroad. While Clinton was out smoking the pot with the world's future leaders, Bush was probably drunk/coked up watching Dukes of Hazard reruns. I'll take a midnight toker over a drunk driver any day. As for communist leaders, the US is a democracy - although at times it may seem to be a Christian theocracy - if Americans vote for and choose a Communist leader, that is the way it goes. Yes, I know having a communist leader would be tough for some people to accept, myself included. But making a blanket statement that Communism is BAD is ludicrous. Granted, most communist countries genuinely suck and have corrupt, insane, totalitarian leaders, but Cuba is actually an example of Communism that has worked. I bet Castro could beat W at chess...or just about anything else. (This post is going to fire up one shitstorm, I can tell). :eek:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/02/opinion/02KRUG.html Everyone Is Outraged By PAUL KRUGMAN rthur Levitt, Bill Clinton's choice to head the Securities and Exchange Commission, crusaded for better policing of corporate accounting â though he was often stymied by the power of lobbyists. George W. Bush replaced him with Harvey Pitt, who promised a "kinder and gentler" S.E.C. Even after Enron, the Bush administration steadfastly opposed any significant accounting reforms. For example, it rejected calls from the likes of Warren Buffett to require deduction of the cost of executive stock options from reported profits. But Mr. Bush and Mr. Pitt say they are outraged about WorldCom. Representative Michael Oxley, the Republican chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, played a key role in passing a 1995 law (over Mr. Clinton's veto) that, by blocking investor lawsuits, may have opened the door for a wave of corporate crime. More recently, when Merrill Lynch admitted having pushed stocks that its analysts privately considered worthless, Mr. Oxley was furious â not because the company had misled investors, but because it had agreed to pay a fine, possibly setting a precedent. But he also says he is outraged about WorldCom. Might this sudden outbreak of moral clarity have something to do with polls showing mounting public dismay over crooked corporations? Still, even a poll-induced epiphany is welcome. But it probably isn't genuine. As the Web site dailyenron.com put it, last week "the foxes assured Americans that they are hot on the trail of those missing chickens." The president's supposed anger was particularly hard to take seriously. As Chuck Lewis of the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity delicately put it, Mr. Bush "has more familiarity with troubled energy companies and accounting irregularities than probably any previous chief executive." Mr. Lewis was referring to the saga of Harken Energy, which now truly deserves a public airing. My last column, describing techniques of corporate fraud, omitted one method also favored by Enron: the fictitious asset sale. Returning to the ice-cream store, what you do is sell your old delivery van to XYZ Corporation for an outlandish price, and claim the capital gain as a profit. But the transaction is a sham: XYZ Corporation is actually you under another name. Before investors figure this out, however, you can sell a lot of stock at artificially high prices. Now to the story of Harken Energy, as reported in The Wall Street Journal on March 4. In 1989 Mr. Bush was on the board of directors and audit committee of Harken. He acquired that position, along with a lot of company stock, when Harken paid $2 million for Spectrum 7, a tiny, money-losing energy company with large debts of which Mr. Bush was C.E.O. Explaining what it was buying, Harken's founder said, "His name was George Bush." Unfortunately, Harken was also losing money hand over fist. But in 1989 the company managed to hide most of those losses with the profits it reported from selling a subsidiary, Aloha Petroleum, at a high price. Who bought Aloha? A group of Harken insiders, who got most of the money for the purchase by borrowing from Harken itself. Eventually the Securities and Exchange Commission ruled that this was a phony transaction, and forced the company to restate its 1989 earnings. But long before that ruling â though only a few weeks before bad news that could not be concealed caused Harken's shares to tumble â Mr. Bush sold off two-thirds of his stake, for $848,000. Just for the record, that's about four times bigger than the sale that has Martha Stewart in hot water. Oddly, though the law requires prompt disclosure of insider sales, he neglected to inform the S.E.C. about this transaction until 34 weeks had passed. An internal S.E.C. memorandum concluded that he had broken the law, but no charges were filed. This, everyone insists, had nothing to do with the fact that his father was president. Given this history â and an equally interesting history involving Dick Cheney's tenure as C.E.O. of Halliburton â you could say that this administration is uniquely well qualified to chase after corporate evildoers. After all, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney have firsthand experience of the subject. And if some cynic should suggest that Mr. Bush's new anger over corporate fraud is less than sincere, I know how his spokesmen will react. They'll be outraged.
If Clinton is a self-made man why doesn't he take responsibility for his actions? Has he paid his legal bills yet with all his $30 million in earnings last year? Did he ever take responsibility for that woman? He is a self-made man depending on what the meaning of "is" is....