Slashdot Mirror
The SEC and Fake Investment Sites
An anonymous reader sent in: "Our web-based challenge for the day: find the SEC's fake investment sites! The SEC claims to have seeded the web with fake investment sites in order to teach naive web users and investors about the dangers of believing all you read and investing without research. These sites have telltale signs of online investment fraud, and if people manage to overlook or ignore those issues and attempt to invest money, informs them that they have made an unwise decision. The SEC says that these sites are intended to encourage wise investing decisions, or in more casual terms, to attempt to slap fools upside the head with a cluestick before they lose their money in a real scam. It's an interesting use of the web by a government-related agency."
Sweet.
What a cool way to teach the less-informed among us not to trust everything just because it's on the web. Now, if we could get websites out there that ask for personal info to do the same, ie:
Enter your credit card info here:
XXXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXXX
No Idiot, this site is about my dog skippy, there is no need for you to hand this over. Now get off the web and find a clue. (Hint: your 10 year old child is more web-savvy than you)
Sent from your iPad.
http://www.enron.com/corp/
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
Shouldn't be too hard to find.
Registrant:
SEC (MCWHORTLE-DOM)
6432 GENERAL GREEN WAY
ALEXANDRIA, VA 22312
US
Domain Name: MCWHORTLE.COM
Administrative Contact, Billing Contact:
SEC (VMGSFHPWCO) webmaster@mcwhortle.com
SEC
6432 GENERAL GREEN WAY
ALEXANDRIA, VA 22312
US
202 824 5151 fax: 202 504 2477
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
that I can invest some Monopoly ® money?
I can picture the site now: Todays' hot stock pick- Buy 1 get one free for ENRON shares.
On the other hand, though, it's kind of sad that there are people who actually invest in this kind of stuff. One would think that people would be (more) careful when there is real money involved. There are plenty of brokers out there, and while they may not give the *best* advice, they certainly wouldn't direct innocent people toward investments that are ovbiously scams. If you don't know what you're doing with your money, then take it to someone who does. If you don't, you're just asking for trouble.
On some level, people affected by these scams get what they have coming to them.
SEC Computers Catch Fire After During Hacker Attack
By Joe Snuffy
Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, January 30, 2002; 2:45 P.M.
The SEC headquarters was evacuated today after a form of the denial of service hacking attack, commonly known as "slashdotting" caused their servers to halt and catch fire. The FBI refuses to confirm that it may be seeking one Rob "Commander Taco" Malda for questioning in this terrorist attack on America's financial structure.
Best Slashdot Co
Design a website with "telltale signs of online investment fraud" and watch how many idiots still try to invest thru it. Then have a warning about how they could have been scammed, but they are lucky Big Brother was looking out for them, and it's not real. Then use the info they gave you to drain their bank accounts, and send an email to them, From: SEC, saying so long, and thanks for all the fish.
If they even comprehend what happened, they will blame the government, since we all know it's full of crooks anyway.
http://www.gppf.org/events/oswindle.htm Shows the FTC doing the exact same thing and discussing it in the 1990's. Sheesh, stuff from 3-5 years ago isn't exactly new :-)
I love it. It is a great way to teach people not to trust everything they read on the net. And WhiteKnight, all the info is made up. The SEC made sure that you can't invest in the company or use the made up info to actually lose money. That was in the article.
We have often joked about doing something similar with viruses. Setting up a hotmail account and sending all the user in our department an attachment. The attachment would write to a log on our network and put up a dialog box that said something like "So you just ran a program from some joker on the internet. You've just lost all your work and your boss has been notified."
We haven't done it of course, but we dream.
Enron Investor Relations
I Heart Sorting Networks
It costs, what, maybe $30000 a year for them to run these fake sites? Less? I know I could do something like them in my spare time, I doubt they hired anyone specifically for this, so lets say it costs them $5000 a year, still a high estimate. If just a few people are LARTed by these sites, I think it's worth it. I'm a Libertarian, so I am against all the things the Gov does to try to "protect us from ourselves" too, but this is a cheap and clever way to educate people, and it probably costs less than the production of a single PSA for TV.
I submitted this on Monday (I mentioned it on my website) I was logged in, not anonymous. So much for logged in users taking precedence over anonymous users :-)
The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.
will be when someone "discovers" one of the fake sites, submits it to slashdot, it gets posted (of course), and the comments start rolling in.
:)
How long will it take before someone comments that its fake. We're quick to point out Xbox emulator fakes when we see them, but would we necessarily discover the nonexistance of a company when its intent is to defraud and not just to boost the false ego of a few misguided geeks.
So yeah, go find them. And when you find one, don't claim you found one, submit it to slashdot instead. Take the joke all the way!
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Pre-IPO Investment Oversubscribed!
McWhortle Enterprises has had to stop accepting investors for Stage 1 of its Pre-IPO investment after the program was over-subscribed by nearly 200%. Because of the enormous demand, we will, for a very limited time, accept new investors into this program.
Darn it, I was all ready to sign up, but I guess the rest of the slashdot community got to it before me.
Funny, Bush didn't mention the increased funding for the War on Stupidity last night...
If you look at the testimonials, it reads just like the typical MLM/"Not MLM!" scam spams that I've been getting lately, complete with the vague (un)identifying info. But this really begs the question: Why are people stupid enough to fall for these scams in the first place? I am strongly convinced that a majority of Americans are completely braindead.
ba-dum ching!
"Old man yells at systemd"
Just check Google for matching phrases! http://www.wemarket4u.net/prosperity/
The electric yellow has got me by the brain banana
Imagine getting paid by the SEC to make up stuff about a non-existent company. Where do I sign up?
OK, who pays for the development and hosting of these web sites? I assume it is my tax dollars being used to tell some gullable shmuck how gullable they really are. My guess is they don't learn anything from this, or worse yet, they think they've learned something but really haven't.
I Heart Sorting Networks
Well, if happiness is bliss, and bliss is ignorance, and ignorance is a form of stupidity, then it follows that the Declaration of Independence guarantees your right to be an idiot.
Who are you to stand in the way of freedom?
Do you have Linux and a DotPal? Click here now!
For a change, this seems like an attempt to
passively *educate* the public, rather that
legislate our free will out of existence. I
would *FAR* rather have the US government
waste our tax dollars on this than on passing
horrendously complex laws that impose massive
fines and prison terms for anyone making
finanial claims not officially endorsed by
the SEC... Consider that, as someone already
pointed out, the SEC considered ENRON a "real" company...
Let the FBI put up sites for child porn, and the requirement for entry into the child porn is submitting your own child porn. Is this entrapment? What about the MPAA doing this with movie downloads?
Fight Spammers!
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission do a similar thing in print publications. They run
bogus investment ads, including Geep - the amazing Sheep/Goat hybrid and Jellyfish Farms. The numbers actually put you in contact with ASIC, who'll tell you to be more careful with your money.
I admit, these are a little easier to spot than the SEC ones...
|>
Here be Dragons
One of the biggest problem with investing theses days is the fact that everyone are doing it. That's right, everyone, like your everyday AOLer and MSNer.
And if you haven't figure out already, there are tons of AOLers out there, those who lack IQ and are willing to believe whatever someone says even though it sounds too good to be true.
Then you ask, dude, these scams are so old, you would be suprised people will fall on anything.
Believe it or not, the economy depends on these AOLers, and it is the government's interest to protect and educate those who lack intelligance.
kawai
So basically we can all wait for the report, find out which site worked the best, and copy it for our very convincing fraud companies.
;)
Nothing like having your tax dollars do a little free R&D for the bad guys!
------
Today's Top Deals
Funny too. Give it a try: http://www.brunching.com/toys/mrtname.html
Who moderates the meta-moderators?
These sites are represented by the law firm of Dewey, Cheatum, and Howe.
I wonder if the SEC anticipated getting /.ed when they estimated how much of a load this site would need to bear. What are their bandwidth costs? Is this /.ing hurting taxpayers?
Lasers Controlled Games!
Considering the huge amount of money that has been invested in techs the past 10 years, and a reliance on such techs by investors, nerds really should care about this stuff.
Here are the results of the domains owned by the SEC according to the whois database at network solutions:
WINDHANDEL.COM
SEC-CIVIL.COM
SECRECRUITMENT.COM
SEC-NL.COM
OPERATIONDESERTFOX.COM
DOUZALS.COM
SEC (SE463-ORG) no.valid.email@WORLDNIC.NET 619 487 7988
MCWHORTLE.COM
Seems they haven't even configured some of them yet. ;)
http://seek2succeed.com/
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Oh bother.
"http://www.lovecalculator.com This site is a fraud! Don't use it! You'll only become disenchanted! The only person that everyone---I mean EVERYONE---has a 100% chance with is Kevin Bacon. Yeah, I know...RUN!"
SEC must be stooping pretty low!
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
I'm sure, with all the money spent chasing down the scammers, an education program like this would slash the costs, and hopefully make spamming less attractive o-> with the desirable result, less spam! =-)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
...as long as they don't resort to spamming to advertise their fake sites. I'd have to LART them if they did.
You can't. Take a look at the example. There information about investing all the up to the point where you send them money. That's where you get slapped in the face.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
Are movies a tax on people who aren't good at math? What about books? The lottery is escapist entertainment. And at a dollar a ticket, it's a better value than a movie. And with the dreck churned out of Hollywood, you have a better chance of winning $100 million than seeing a good flick.
I wish the FDA would do the same with "alternative medicine" sites.
The FDA should seed the web with "herbal viagra", "super blue green algae", etc sites, then slap mofo's upside the head when they are stupid enough to actually try ordering.
I submitted this on Monday (I mentioned it on my website) I was logged in, not anonymous. So much for logged in users taking precedence over anonymous users :-)
... excuse me ... reviews of media releases (DVDs) and movies that encourage free software enthusiasts to go out and put money in the pockets of an industry bent on hamstringing the internet and legislating free software (and the tools to make it) out of existence.
I quit submitting stories to slashdot years ago, when similar things would happen. The submission process is straightforward enough, but the editorial process is about as transparent as crude oil on a moonless night. Who knows why stories get rejected one day, resubmitted and accepted another, with the latecommer getting the credit. Who knows why a site which purports to be pro free software/open source/whatever dumps stories of technical interest in favor of promotions
I gave up trying to figure this out years ago, and now content myself to just reading whatever interesting stuff happens to make it through the filter, and posting an occasional diatribe or two.
I recommend anyone discontent with this sort of thing to do the same. It will entail much less frustration and heartache for you, and if enough people do it perhaps the editors will take the hint and become more fair in how they select stories and attribute them. In the meantime, life is too short, so don't let this sort of irritation get to you.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I have a problem with this. The U.S. government is, once again, lying. People need to be able to trust their government, but the government engages in every kind of behavior that it calls criminal.
For a small collection of U.S. government lies and misleading behavior, see this collection of links I put together: What should be the Response to Violence?
Bush's education improvements were
The ASIC - Australia's equivalent to the SEC - has been runnning bogus internet scams of their own for a while now. They even have awards for the best (or worst depending on your viewpoint) scams found - The Gull Awards (past winners)
Thats Gull as in Gullible.
*** I am the real stylewagon
While this is a fine idea, they really need to put similar warnings on the Social Security web site.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
To bid on these shares, you must quickly e-mail us the number of shares you wish to purchase, together with your major credit card number and social security number (for identification) so we can reserve your slot.
Thanks, SEC! Now I now where to listen for plain text emails containing social security card and credit numbers. So perhaps you are teaching people a lesson, but who's gonna pay when they become real victims of identity and credit card theft?
The way they are handling this is just as irresponsible as the people who would actually email sensitive information.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
Given that it's been reported on sites like CNN as well, pulling in rubberneckers who are techy and not, SEC is probably not counting on much beyond the curiosity factor with this particular site. Searchs by slashdotters may through off stats on other sites today, but that's probably an expected outlier as well--we are not the only ones to like challenges, and announcing that you've got sites like this out there is tantamount to declaring a challenge.
Immediate "news-worthy" benefits had already been generated by this site prior to its mentions on news sites. Hopefully ongoing benefits (people who are little more clued in about internet scams) will be generated by other of their fake sites. SEC did throw this one away--at least for now--by using it as the basis for a press release.
http://www.wemarket4u.net/
Yes, really. Domain is registered to the federal trade commission.
Need. More. Sleep. Ignore parent post.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
only thing that drives our society is money.
don't be such a cynic. Just because comptuer geeks never find it doesn't mean there isn't anything more. There are a few people in the real world who have found love, and that drives them to things that money doesn't,
Saddly, as a comptuer geek I can note the existance of this phenomenon, but cannot accually participate. I also note that most who claim to have found it realise in 10 years that they have not. Still there are exceptions.
I personally much prefer government-sponsored education to government-mandated restrictions.
The FDA and FTC do have some phony medical sites up. When you get to the "order page", you'll get a Government warning instead. Can you find them?
Just looking over the 'investor relations' page. Looks like they recently changed their stock symbol.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
"You just accidentally voted for George W Bush! That was extremely foolish. But it doesn't matter because the outcome of the election is up to Enron and the Supreme Court."
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
any site that fails to use a BGCOLOR tags in its body definition immediately comes under suspicion. i browse using netscape, and the default background color for undefined pages is "Netscape Grey" and not white, as it is under explorer.
as soon as i see graphics with white halos hovering on a grey background, i know the site is run by an inexperienced webmaster, and any information on the site is likely fraudulent.
take, for example, Slashdot's light mode...
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
Offtopic gripe about evil copyright-holding corporation!
- Have a picture
We end up paying more for the people who got scammed then we pay for hosting an investment honeypot or hundred.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
http://www.wemarket4u.net/
It looks like they've been doing this for around two years now.
Now all i need to do is seed the internet with copies of said sites - however I will not tell the people about their unwise investing... rather I will take their investments and apply them to my world domination fund!!!
Thanks SEC.
man,how depressing are you? sheeesh.
I've been a computer geel since '81, and an electronic geek for as long as I can remember. I built my first radio when I was 7, and explained how it worked.
I have been married for just about 12 years, and I've been in love for 14 years.
The key is, get out and do something else. take up kyaking, or climbing, or surfing, something, anything that has little to do with computers.
There are plent of intelegent attarctive people out there, not all of them are geeks.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I don't think the SEC really gets it. I've been wrong lots of times before and I might be here. Personally, whenever I see a website that contains something that I'm even moderately curious about, I click on their "order here" button even if I'm not going to order anything. My hopes is that they might have some additional piece of critical information that wasn't obvious in the rest of their sight (for example shipping costs, payment options, etc). The point is that I generally investigate a site pretty thoroughly before I commit to sending any of *my* information to them.
I doubt that I'm alone in this practice. What this means is that clicking on the "gotcha link" at McWhortle.com isn't really a gotcha. It's just part of trying to find out additional information about the company. If you really want to implement the "gotcha" I would think you'd have to delay the "gotcha" right up until someone actually is really ready to bid/purchase/whatever. You got to get to the point, I'd think, where people are actually thinking about doing this, and *then* hit them with the "gotcha". Otherwise, anyone who gets to the current "gotcha page" is going to dismiss it with, "Well, yeah I kinda thought this wasn't right. Glad I don't get caught by these things. Glad I don't have to worry about these kind of scams... on the other hand, check out this other site! Wow, investments in working cold fusion?"
I would think if you're trying to convince someone that they are too gullible, you got to catch them in the process of actually having taken the bait. Otherwise, they're not likely to learn.
$.02. Am I off my rocker?
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
Yes! it's perfect! Muahahah! We'll create a whole bunch of fake companies, put up flashy web pages with trendy earthtone color-schemes, advertise things people need like.. uh.. value-added B2B online toilet paper warehouses. Then we'll launch a bunch of fake IPO's that'll go wild because we're on the Internet and everybody knows the future of business is on the Internet! Yes. And then we'll take the money and run! That'll teach the fools to not believe all they read AND it'll stimulate the economy at the very same time!! Muahahah!
Oh wait..
..trying to stop Napster by uploading renamed MP3's of Homer Simpson repeatedly saying D'oh!
Hmm, if there are enough in the air for this imaginary device to detect, then wouldn't I be breathing them in?
Yes, but surface leptins are not hazardous even when inhaled (at least at typical doses). You need to inhale at least one entire bactirium or virus to get infected. The McWhortle leptinate detector thus detects the harmful materials before they can harm you.
Send $10 for a prospectus, or $100 for a distributor's kit, to:
McWhortle Industries
c/o I. P. Daily
123 Easy Street
Anytown USA 33333
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
It's true, the lies are not intended to be destructive. But I think that they are unintentionally destructive, because they make us all realize that our government cannot be trusted not to lie.
I am very much for educating the public. This, in my opinion, is not the way to do it.
Bush's education improvements were
Go to the front page here, to see how many suckers each site has gotten:
http://www.wemarket4u.net/
Twoflower
--
Twoflower
Did anyone read the Enron Human Rights Statement? The part concerning "fair compensation" for employees was quite laughable :)
Honorable mentions also go to the clause concerning the conducting of businesses according to given laws, along with the section concerning "Respect".
In case of fire, do not use elevator. Use water!
Instead of wasting valuable resources making fake fraud sites, why not invest those resources into vigorous prosecution of securities fraud? I mean start locking lots of guys up in maximum security facilities for a long time and strip them and their families of their assets. And start with Fortune 500 companies playing footsie with the rules. Rules not tough enough? Use some of the money to lobby congress for increased criminal penalties and jail time for securities fraud.
If the enforcement resources are wasted on BS education efforts and the penalties are soft (fines, probation, country club minimum security "jails"), people are going to keep doing it.
Pretending to steal my money and calling it fighting theft instead of actually finding and punishing people who steal is stupid, plain and simple.
Crispin
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc.
Immunix: Security Hardened Linux Distribution
Available for purchase
Come on, if Slashdotters decided energy policy it would be based on the original "Napster" business model. Come to think of it, perhaps that wasn't that different from what Enron did.
IANAL.
SEC doesnt have legal athority except in fraud, thats why they settle many cases with people for a cut of the profit.
Many people just let these agencies run them over, you do have legal rights. And surprise, sometimes our courts uphold them.
The SEC didn't get Yahoo to write a story on them, they just released a press release through PRNewswire. Yahoo picks these up and carries them. Note both the "WASHINGTON, Jan. 25 /PRNewswire/" at the beginning and "SOURCE: McWhortle Enterprises, Inc." at the top and bottom.
It is a good lesson. But it would be extremely valuable if our government was the one that tried honesty.
Bush's education improvements were
This is an interesting episode of "crime jamming" and reminds me of strategies to reduce the population of unwanted insects. Criminals are exposed by dilluting their means to scam people with "neutered" sites.
I could see this successfully applied to illegal online gambling, murder-for-hire, illegal forms of pornography, perhaps even to nab would-be terrorists.
Unfortunately for the slashdot crowd, I could see the MPAA and other corporate orgs posting sites which catch people attempting to download software and content that they did not pay for. Hopefully, in this case, would-be bandits would only get Apple's favorite community service message: "Don't Steal Music".
- James
I smell cover-up, we are running a deficit, the SEC is putting up fraudulent web sites. I suspect they will take the users money and balance the budget.
TastesLikeHerringFlavoredChicken
TastesLikeHerringFlavoredChicken
Well, if you're gonna slap 'em upside the head with an obvious forgery, what's the point of the site? They should make them at least competent. Those are the kinds of sites that you really need to watch out for.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Maybe they took it off after someone hacked the site so that it really did collect credit card numbers, and said it hadn't ;-)
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Enron's business model was fine (treat energy (among other things) as a commodity to be traded and sold), it was their accounting practices that caused the trouble. Many corporations have debt (see: Amazon.com), they just don't try to hide it as much as Enron did. Note that almost all corporations engage in creative accounting practives (known as window-dressing) to make themselves look better...but Enron went a bit further than that.
Oh yeah...and Enron basically laundered money to avoid paying taxes. And then that whole 401k debacle.
The perspective is f'd up, too.
The photo is taken at an angle to the building, so the lines aren't square, but the logo is.
That's slashdot for you....
... As long as they don't spam me with solicitations to invest in this scheme!
Um... GE wrote our energy policy.
Before the California power shortage, they supplied the power for half the country -- the eastern half. Now, thanks to that travesty, General Electric (DBA California Edison) gets bailed out by the state, watches their western competition (PGE) go bankrupt, and gets a virtual monopoly with locked in rEdiculous prices and laws that say they can gouge the public. They have their sights turned on Bonneville which has the Northwest locked up (all those free power dams), which is still nominally "owned" by the Federal Government, who, with Enron as broker, made a fortune on the artificially imposed "spot market".
Enron collapsed when the California power shortage magically disappeared because they weren't making 1000% profits anymore.
This site was created by the SEC, FTC, NASD, with a little help from their friends, the Whitehouse.
The agencies and groups, except one, created the site because of an increase in investment scams. But the Bush Administration has invoked executive privaledge to keep its reasons for helping to create the site secret.
The site shows some of the telltale signs of online investment fraud. Promises of fast and high profits, with little or no risk, are classic red flags of fraud. And one obvious tip off was that they claimed to be a broadband provider who's 'business model is working.'
Well, fix it up if you know how, and submit the result! If you're an American, think of it as volunteering for your country.
-Paul Komarek
Okay folks. Many people are claiming that nobody would be stupid enough to fall for the (known) SEC fakes. Especially if their fake status becomes "common knowledge". Well, I've got some news for you.
There are people who forward chain letters because they're afraid they'll die if they don't. There are people who believe Amway will make them rich. There are people who think Scientology makes sense. There are people who killed themselves in late 1999 (IIRC) to meet on the backside of a comet.
There are people who believe that Bill Gates will pay them for being part of an email tracking experiment. There are people who believe computer viruses can make your ice cream go all melty (well, maybe that's stretching things...). Some people gave money, of their own free will, to Donald Trump.
And there are people who believed GW Bush had a "clear policy for the Middle East" during the presidential debates.
You could show the mcwhortle site to these people, tell them it's a fake, and they'd still fall for it. While we like to claim that those who write "first post" are the least intelligent creatures on earth, they're already head-and-shoulders above the people the SEC is trying to help. Many of these people are retired, and hoping to get something back from the society they gave 40+ years of work to (like my father). Some of these people abandon all reason when it comes to this hope (unlike my father, thankfully).
The SEC is trying to reduce the number of fraud-related tragedies among these people, and I think it's a good thing. In fact, I think this is one of the coolest things I've seen our government do for the public, ever. The SEC seems to have a clue about real life and real people, unlike the Whitehouse and Congress (no matter who is in residence at the time).
-Paul Komarek
Does it strike anyone besides me as just a wee bit wrong to have an FTC Commissioner named Mr. Swindle?
Still there.
http://mcwhortle.com/investnow.htm
"Bidding is now accepted for Stage 2 of the McWhortle Enterprises Pre-IPO offering. Estimated share value is approximately $10, which will, upon conclusion of the IPO offering in three (3) months, be worth more than 400 times the initial investment. To bid on these shares, you must quickly e-mail us the number of shares you wish to purchase, together with your major credit card number and social security number (for identification) so we can reserve your slot."
Do people actually fall for these things?
Easy acceptance that your government lies is acknowledgement that it is not your government.
Bush's education improvements were
It's not a troll. I've learned a lot from the responses. Some people seem to feel that asking their government to be responsible is beyond imagining.
If you are a U.S. citizen, you pay for this attitude. You pay Israel $905 per year for every man, woman, and child who lives there. Why? Apparently so that U.S. weapons makers can make more profit.
If you allow your government to lie, you can be sure of two things: 1) You won't be the one in control. 2) You will pay.
The U.S. government does a lot of things you probably don't suspect and for which, if you are a U.S. citizen, you probably don't want to pay. For example, the U.S. government brought Arabs to the U.S. and trained them in terrorism. The U.S. government was planning to attack Afghanistan long before the September 11, 2001 terrorism in the U.S. because a profitable oil and gas pipeline is planned that must go through Afghanistan. The terrorism apparently gave the government the excuse for which it was looking. For more about this, see the collection of links in What should be the Response to Violence?.
Bush's education improvements were
No, there was, and isn't, anything wrong with their basic business model. I actuallt have a client (Florida Gas Utilities) that does very well doing the same thing...albeit on a smaller scale.
Enron was a bit ambitous after the success of their trading in energy markets, however. They got into broadband, telephone, and some other markets. And just becasue you have debt doesn't necessarily mean that the plan is flawed. Most companies start out with debt, then go into debt further to expand, advertise, etc., and continually have debt. Just like you and me (think mortgage, credit cards, and car loan), it's difficult for a company to survive and make a profit without carrying debt.
Was Enron's debt too high? Yes, it was...but not, AFAIK, as a result of their busines plan. More than likely, bad management is the culprit. And trying to expand a bit too much a bit too fast.
And I'm sure there's some trolls out there who would love to buy your farts.