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WorldCom CFO Accused of $3.6 Billion Fraud
winter was among the first to point out that allegations of fraud have led to a massive stock drop at WorldCom. A flurry of stories have popped up on Yahoo!, none of them good news for WorldCom. CFO Scott Sullivan is accused of misstating the company's revenues, specifically its earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortization (aka EBITDA), and the stock has slid more than 50% (as of this writing) in after-hours trading.
I love how they pin it on one guy.... like it was all his fault. but we fired him now...
Let's put all of our Social Security money into the stock market. The private sector could make much better use of that money than the nasty old government . . .
Better yet, let's just go to Reno and gamble it all away. Yeah!
...did Martha Stewart sell her stock in time?
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
When are our corporate leaders going to put away greed in favor of fiscal responsibility? They are overpaid, over-valued and over-hyped. I can't believe that some execs make and own large percentages of the entire company, causing the stock price of the silent masses to be controlled by the actions of these idiot few. These guys even take loans for themselves ($366 million for ex-worldcom ceo)!
-Sean
one slap on the wrist, and a fine of whatever pocket change you happen to have on you.
This is just another example of the real trouble American companies are in. On PBS the other night, Frontline divoted a whole hour to the extreme mess than the accounting/stock/ceo situation is in... Basically, Stock options aren't reported. CEO gets huge stock options. CEO lies about company's value. Accountants lie for value too, as they have consulting contracts with the company. Truth is found out, company's stock plunges, accounting company shreds paper... pays off politicians to keep things status-quoe... cycle starts over again. Very scarry.
LNUX vs. WCOM
no, investing is a science. you just proved it. its a social science. the stock market is completely based on demand and, consequently, the supply to squelsh that demand.
,whether through performance, news, or hoopla, that the stock will be worth more in the future than at the current moment.
nobody should actually care what is going on. ive seen a simple fork from a college cafeteria sell on ebay for $15. does that price seem correct for the product? hardly. ebay proves that people will pay for stuff that is literally worthless. but oh wait, its not worthless if people are willing to pay for it.
the capital system is, by definition, and efficient market. all company news is built into the current stock price, therefore what you are really paying for when buying a stock is the expectation that the company will prosper in the future. this will breed good news, which will then appropriately help people value in the stock in a new context. that is why a stock like amazon was a high flyer during the late 90s. the expectation that amazon was going to take out brick and mortars, and the fact jeff bezos was time magazine's man of the year all helped boost the expectation and perception that the stock would be worth a higher price in the future. therein, lies the science: you buy a company that will do well enough to give a perception
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[insert funny
when I checked stocks were .20 a share, down 78%
Yahoo Real-time Mkt
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
If the reports about WorldCom are accurate then this is Enron all over again.
In today's economic environment, accountancy practices are under closer scrutiny than ever before - and not before time. The only reason why Enron were able to get away with fraud and misrepresentation on such a grand scale was because everyone - the accountants, the analysts, and the investors - had their eyes closed to the obvious.
Hindsight is 20/20, but even an idiot could tell you that, in an era where companies lie about just about everything, anything said by a CEO, issued by a press officer or printed in an annual report should be taken with a very large pinch of salt.
Post-Enron, the markets are very jittery, and many investors have lost faith entirely - if a seemingly sure-fire, blue-chip company like Enron can fall then anyone can. Freefall is an exaggeration, but compare how quickly the markets bounced back from September 11 to how badly they've reacted to the ongoing crisis of faith sparked off by the Enron/Andersen fiasco.
Witness how even the slightest sign of weakness is being jumped upon by analysts. Profits warnings and other negative indicators that would have shrugged off just twelve months ago are now being forensically examined by paranoid dealers anxious not to get caught out a second time.
One things for sure: there are a few more timebombs ticking away out there. Enron may have been just the first of many.
The bottom line is this: it's going to be some time until the markets recover and it's going to be longer still until we see the kind of market gains that we experienced in the 80's and 90's.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
This guy predicted that 25 of the largest telco companies will go down (and this 25 included Nortel, but that's the only name I remember), and NO ONE will rescue them at all, because the only way the other 4-5 companies will have a chance of a healthy life afterwards is if they let the companies go bankrupt (R.I.P.) while the 4-5 remaining companies will buy them up in a fire-sale.
Just wondering if anyone else heard about this prediction...it was just last week I think. I'd also like to get my hands on the article. If anyone knows anything about this, please let me know. I did a bit of Google searching and checked the NYTimes, but didn't find anything. Bad keywords probably.
I was "overqualified" to work for them. Sadly, there was a point where I was looking for something else to do. I wanted something that was basically brainless, mundane, paid okay, and provided decent benefits. I figured that although I'd hate it, I could be a decent telemarketer (I can speak, unlike 80% of normal telemarketers). I took their little employment test, did the interview, and was told that I wasn't the type of person they were looking for -- overqualified. I suppose, however, that if corporate management is going to be doing questionable things, they prefer to have mindless drones working for them. Fewer people to make mental notes.
You can't murder work.
-- SIGFPE
I work for one of the telcos, fortunately not worldcom. But these clowns are going to bury the whole market. Between the former CEO and CFO, these fuck-witts have managed to further erode what little confidence the market had left in the sector, and most likely, the stock market and economy as a whole. I hate seeing the feds overstep their bounds, but they need to make an example out of these assholes. It needs to involve time in prison....and a lot of it...and I don't mean club fed, either, where their biggest worry is getting enough time on the driving range. No, I mean prison with Bubba and all of his sexually frustrated cell-mates. These guys deserve to someone's prison-bitch for the better part of a decade. Oh, and don't forget to conficate everything that these pricks own, so they actually have to go out and get a j-o-b when they are released.
That's kind of hard to do, because I'm not aware of an international organization which can claim jurisdiction and be in a position to apply and enforce a punishment. The US can hold them accountable for what they've done to the US, but it's hard to do it on an international level.
Yes! That guy!
It's the Government de-regulating all these companies that's the problem! These assholes feel like there's NO regulations now...so they can be as greedy as they want to be..and the hell with the 17,000 who are about to suffer because of their massive greed by losing their jobs.
An[d] even though anybody else has little to do with WCOM, the whole market is going to plunge.
... You'd be surprised who will be hurt, because you don't know who has exposure. The investors don't know who either, so they'll avoid everybody until they find out.
For good reason.
1) Worldcom is MCI and UUNET. MCI is the first of the competitive long distance companies and the second largest telecom. UUNET is the first commercial ISP and one of the largest. Both may just go away now.
2) Bankruptcy of something as large as Worldcom can affect a lot of other operations. While the people who buy the pieces will probably keep them running, the people they bought equipment and owe money to can probably kiss it goodbye (along with future orders they were counting on and building equipment to fill). So can everybody who bought their stock or bonds: Banks, retirement funds, money market funds, bond funds, corporations who parked some of their cash reserves in those funds,
3) Also if they go belly-up, their stuff gets sold at bankruptcy-auction prices, like ten cents on the dollar or less. Equipment winds up on E-bay and equipment manufacturers find themselves competing against their own stuff. Bottom drops out of market and equipment manufacturers suffer still more. If the buyers keep MCI and/or UUNET running, they now have working networks for which they paid nearly nothing. So they can drop their prices almost to the cost of operation and undercut competitors who had to pay for (and are still paying for) their equipment. The other tecoms and/or ISPs tighten belts further and/or start operating at a loss and also go belly-up. Down go more suppliers, more investors, more associated industries. Maybe some of THOSE go belly-up, and the fire spreads further.
4) It's another accounting scandal. (Anderson again. Oops.) This will make investors leery of other companies, raising the perceived risk of further financial scandal. ("Once is chance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.") The value of stocks and corporate bonds is ONLY what people are willing to pay for them at any given instant, and people base their valuation on perceived risk vs. benefit. If the risk just got bigger than the benefit, they won't trust stocks and bonds and won't buy them. The whole market tanks.
A broad drop the market from this makes perfect sense to me.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Their accountant was...Arthur Andersen LLP. As Gomer Pile would say: surprise, surprise.
If it had been one of the other "Final Four" accouting firms, maybe it would have been the beginning of something huge. Expect a "what do you expect?" while they move on to the next scandal.
So you're saying that after all the years of backstabbing coworkers, financial threatening, lying, politics, selling off grandma, etc to get to the top, CEO's don't suddenly become honest?
If morals meant profits, capitalism would be the garden of Eden.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
People that cheat thousands of everyday people out of money that they invest in their 401k, IRA, or other investment vehicle should get life at hard labor. It is high time the Federal Government tightened up corporate law ...
But it's already illegal!
and DRASTICALLY increased penalties for offenders. No Club Fed for this guy or Ken Lay and his Enron cronies. No, they need to spend their lives in Lousisana's Angola Prison where deer and Aligators play and everyone stands upright in the shower.
I'm completely with you there. Who cares whether the crook took a thousand bux by waylaying you on the way from the bank, cracking your account, burlgling your house, scamming you, or faking a corporate financial report and causing you to lose it in the market? You're out just as many bux.
(Extra points for force and threat of force, of course.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Yet more proof that analysts do not have a clue as to what is going on in the market. I particularly like JP Morgan's coverage, which was initiated a long-term buy at around 30, then upgraded to a buy at around 8.
The comparison to the auto industry doesn't work. Back when there were 50 auto companies
there were a lot fewer people in the US and a lot less demand for cars. A shake-out was inevitable.
There would be no need for any of those 25 telecom companies to go broke if they were run properly -- there's plenty of customers and plenty of demand.
What we are seeing with WorldCom, Enron, Tyco, ect. is a recurring pattern. Companies with lots of customers and lots of revenue -- who are going broke. More and more companies are becoming the playthings of the wealthy elite and Wall Street -- existing not to produce goods and services but existing only to enrich a handful of people.
example -- @Home had over 4 million customers paying $45 a month. Do the math. And yet they went broke. Could it be the $6 Billion they blew on a worthless dotcom?
example -- Exodus Communications had $300 million gross revenue in 2000. In 2001 they had $660 million gross revenue -- more than double the previous year -- and filed for Chapter 11 at the end of 2001. Why? Blowing hundred of millions on bad aquisitions.
example -- AT&T hires a new CEO. Fires him less that a year later, citing "a lack of intellectual leadership" as the reason. But gives him a $26 million severance package.
example -- Hewlett-Packard/Compaq -- History shows very clearly that there has never been a merger of this type that has worked out well. Not one. And yet the deal was done anyway because it will enrich the people who engineered the deal. 5 years from now, when Hewlett-Packard is following in the footsteps of WorldCom and Carly Fiorina is fired by the HP board of directors, it won't matter -- she and a few others will have already pocketed their millions and will draw a nice severeance package as a reward for running the company into the ground.
example -- Dozens of companies who are doing poorly, profits are down, even losing money in some cases, but top executives receive large raises and bonuses.
"I'm not aware of an international organization which can claim jurisdiction and be in a position to apply and enforce a punishment
dont we already have an organisation for global jurisdiction over anything and everything: the US government
If you havent noticed - the US government is slowly pushing itself into the world governors chair and forcing every nation on the planet to comply with our desires. I mean we just told Arafat that his time is ended - and we announced that we are basically going to form a palistinian state within 3 years. Name another country/government that has so much power as to be able to form nations by verbal command
I mean we already use the US military to help enforce what the government wants - how would this be any different.
Oh, let's just string him up by his entrails. Skip the formalities and legalisms!
- Have a picture
ya, but how exactly is he related to Dick Cheney?
The funny thing is that they still have a huge ass enron sign up at pac bell park in SF. These mega-corp scandals are just getting worse and worse.
Its not to say that this bulshit hasnt been happening for hundreds of years... but its about flipping time that some light got shed on it - and maybe the world can start getting rid of all the BS criminalism in corporations and governments by seeing this shit and finally saying that we have had enough. I am not in favor of the death penalty for humans - but i consider people who do these sorts of thing (and car salesmen/politicians) to be sub-human... so I ahve no problem with death penalties for such massive rip off scams as this.
but it lacked in the execution. In all honesty the Frontline special on the fall of the dotcoms, broadcast originally 24 January of this year, explained certain aspects of the current malaise much more dramatically -- and sounded like less of a history lesson to boot.
The companion website linked above has an extensive set of links and interviews. Highly recommended.
========================================
Death will come, and will have your eyes
-- Pavese
Enron, Tyco, ImClone, Worldcom...
All examples of companies that have become large and powerful by being deceptive. What does the US government do about it? Not a damn thing. Why? Because they are all big spenders and heavily linked to the political status quo.
If you want to read a really enlightening book, check out Stupid White Men - I kid you not, this book will open your eyes.
We are at a point in the world where there is a new aristocracy - the corporate powers - and it is only getting worse. You think they control the government now? Give them another 6 years of this administration and we will all miss the days of individual freedom...
Sorry if I come across as a downer - things just don't seem that good these days...
Just my $.002
--Jon
+3 informative? I don't think so
June 25 -- WorldCom has uncovered what people close to the company describe as a massive fraud, inflating a common measure of its earnings by more than $3.8 billion over the last five quarters. The company late Tuesday confirmed its intention to restate its earnings and said it had notified the Securities and Exchange Commission.
6 billion seems to be what their earnings should be:
Without these transfers, the company's reported EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) would be reduced to $6.339 billion for 2001
And the sad thing is, is that this is going to be caused by a company that was trading at 62 cents before the news hit.
If the buyers keep MCI and/or UUNET running, they now have working networks for which they paid nearly nothing. So they can drop their prices almost to the cost of operation and undercut competitors who had to pay for (and are still paying for) their equipment.
If their equipment is put up for auction, all those competitors out there will have an equal chance to bid up the prices. So it doesn't make sense to say that equipment will go for nearly nothing, allowing huge prices cuts. If the equipment is cheap enough everyone will bid on it, and it won't go for nearly nothing anymore.
Also, don't ignore the positive effects that a cheap equipment auction could have. Maybe some company will be able to keep a few more employees with the money they save buying used MCI racks.
Well, it's not like there's any downside. Sell someone dope, go to a maximum security jail and be anally raped for the rest of your life; destroy thousands or tens of thousands of peoples' lives and you get a slap over the wrist.
We give these things special names ("white collar crime"), don't police them especially rigourously, and allow people to escape liability hiding behind limited-liability constructs, so why wouldn't you take the risk?
This is a serious situation. This fraud has cost 17,000 people their jobs and many others their life savings.
A quick peek of the Yahoo WCOM Message Boards shows many desperate messages about people threatening suicide and serious financial losses.
These are the people who the suits at the top never think of, while they enrich themselves.
Customers like choosing big-name companies because they seem like they ought to be safe. I've come across some real horror stories related to smaller, more local ISPs. So, what's an ordinary business supposed to do to get ISP service that they can rely on for a few years running, without paying through the nose?
Tuesday June 18, 8:00 am Eastern Time
Press Release
SOURCE: OSDN
Forbes.com Provides Readers With Newsfeed From Slashdot
Slashdot-Branded Area Provides Forbes.com Readers With Cutting-Edge, High Tech Content
ACTON, MA--(INTERNET WIRE)--Jun 18, 2002 -- OSDN and Forbes.com today announced that Forbes.com will feature a newsfeed from Slashdot® -- one of OSDN's premier web sites -- providing senior-level business readers with access to cutting-edge, high-tech content online.
Forbes.com's recent web site redesign prominently features a Slashdot-branded area with a newsfeed from the site. Slashdot is one of the largest tech sites on the web, with coverage ranging from the ultra-technical to the ultra-controversial. Slashdot joins sites such as Reuters, which provides widespread news, and The McKinsey Group, which provides research updates, to Forbes.com readers.
"We were thrilled when Forbes.com expressed interest in a newsfeed from Slashdot because it will direct even more senior-level business professionals to the Slashdot site," said Richard French, general manager, OSDN. "This move will help to position OSDN to business readers as the place for high tech content, and will help OSDN continue to gain credibility in broader business markets."
"We pursued Slashdot because we think it will add to Forbes.com's Technology channel by providing the caliber of high-tech news our senior executive readership wants," said Paul Maidment, editor, Forbes.com. "Slashdot is a welcome addition to our site."
OK, now I'm scared...
Publicly traded companies are actually pretty heavily regulated in terms of their financial disclosures. The problem is the companies are conspiring with the first-line watchdogs (the auditors) to lie about their finances.
That's how Enron became one of the top ten companies in the US, when it was totally illiquid and on the verge of bankruptcy.
It's kind of an arms race, because if your competitors were doing it, you had to do it too.
- Have a picture
No, you are an idiot. Watch the Frontline special on this very topic. Just came out this week. The Republicans are head of the class when it comes to letting Big Business police themselves.
Guess who was their auditor until last May... Andersen. (Bloomberg) However, they claim WCom was wihholding information from them, hum.... Fortunately for your own company, you can't choose Andersen to be your auditor anymore :-)
Some of the competitors already have working networks. It makes no sense to buy a nationwide network or the equipment to operate it if you've already got one of your own. This really sucks for companies that have actually shouldered the cost of building and maintaining these networks, because now some competitor is going to come along and slaughter them.
The carriers will have to drop their prices below the break-even point, and there will be further layoffs and maybe even bankruptcies. And as the industry contracts, competition disappears and the consumer eventually pays for any short term benefits he/she may may have enjoyed.
VA LINUX was used as an example in the report, because the VALINUX IPO was a huge rip-off. What did CMDRTACO know and when did he know it??!
Bernie, I thought you never posted to slashdot. ;-)
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
At some point in the not too distance future, I will be at odds with my government and its eighty-year grandfather clause. Maybe I'll try and take a case before the Supreme Court and tear it all down.
Until then, there is one rule we all can live by. Do not trust any one entity with all of your cash, resources, etc. Not the federal government. Not a multinational. Not even your local bank.
It's really sad in the corporate sector, since even admitting you have been stolen from causes a drastic drop in your stock value. From the typical corp's point of view, better to let Joe Schmoe get away with a couple of hundred grand, than publically go after him, and lose millions on the stock market.
Martha saved herself somewhere between $40,000 - $80,000 through (allegedly) insider trading. Her stock value (MSO) has dropped around $200,000,000!
You can bet Sullivan has sold vast quantities of his stock, and invested it elsewhere, before this news broke. As long as he hasn't broken any laws (and corporate types excel at this, as they have highly paid lawyers to arrange immoral actions in a legal manner), his personal assets are untouchable.
...WorldCom Finds $3.8 Billion Error.
Too bad for WorldCom it wasn't the old "Community Chest" card reading "Bank error in your favor. Collect $3.8 Billion dollars"
I hope that someday we will be able to put away our fears and prejudices and just laugh at people. - Jack Handey
A large part of the problem of fraud within corporations is because of the construct of a corporation itself. A corporation is a fictitious person who bears the responsibility of (nearly) all acts the corporation takes; stockholders can't be held liable. As a result, stockholders will constantly push towards the profit while ignoring the means of generating that income.
I suggest you look up 'Kondratiev cycle technology'. Jay Forrester (inventor of magnetic-core memory), studied this at MIT/Sloan school and determined that the a long-term economic cycle develops due to the 'self-ordering' nature of capital equipment.
Basically Forrester's group found evidence for the following feedback loop: Early in the deployment of any technology there is a scarcity of capital. Capital equipment is expensive, and early investments involve high degrees of risk accompanied by high profits in a given technology sector. That in turn brings investment in the businesses developing this capital. However, a large part of this capital is used in the development of the capital itself (i.e. IT tends to need advanced hardware and software to develop the bleeding-edge new hardware and software for actual end-use).
Thus the 'buildup phase' of new technology creates a high demand (for both the acutal equipment and the stock of the companies that make it). At some point, however the generation of this new (and expensive) equipment (or software) exceeds the actual (end-user) demand. When this happens the high profit margins that were being realized during the build-up phase disappear quite rapidly, the investment-value follows (crashing stock prices) and the investment money looks for other places. See this article
Sound familiar? Whether or not you buy into the economic details, this is one of the behaviors seen in economics. The inflated acquisition prices mentioned are the direct result of this effect.
Because sure people make stupid mistakes even (especially?) with billion dollar transactions. But the funny thing about the stock market is that the money doesn't ever go away. Whenever someone loses in the market, someone else has made a profit.
And yes it sucks when the players break the rules but especially on the financial rules the market punishes you very hard. I worked for a biotech firm that was growing well, showing solid net earnings ca $300m on $2b sales, a 30:1 p/e ratio. Our japan division was found to have been moving inventories to the tune of changing the sales #'s by $50m. This lie, accounting for only 2.5% caused a nearly 50% drop in stock price and a (justified) shareholders lawsuit.
Whenever someone fsck's with the rules of the game (fixing the books, insider trading, breaking anti-trust rules, whatever), real people get hurt and we have SEC, IRS etc to try and keep up with the process. MS imo is an excellent example of how a determined and unscrupulous competitor can harm while evading the systems controls(sic).
I'm just thanking my stars that (so far) the politicians havent fscked up like they did after the '29 stock market crash. The US enacted protectionist trade tarrifs which effectively were the first blow in killing off the *world* economy.
Post-sept-11'th fears and RIAA / DMCA idiocies aside, at least across a several bumpy decades our boneheads in Washington, the EU, etc at least so far have managed not to fsck up. They still have opportunities to snatch defeat from the waiting hands of victory, but so far it could be a whole lot worse I think.
Linux is Linux, if One need clarify their dist: <Dist>/GNU Linux
bsds are of course just BSD
A new generation is emerging. A generation unlike any that has preceded it-- defined not by an age, but rather an attitude. It's the first generation characterized not just by people, but by a whole new way of thinking. It's the digital generation, or as we call it at WorldCom, generation d.
WorldCom is proud to offer its employees a full range of comprehensive benefits.
Additionally, employees can take advantage of a corporate 401K plan, investing up to 20% of their salaries in a variety of fund options. As an added perk, WorldCom matches 100% of an employee's contribution to the 401k plan, up to 5% of the employee's salary, after only one year of employment. Planning for the future is of the utmost importance, so WorldCom makes this investment easy for every full-time employee. And with WorldCom's online employee tools, registration and management of these benefits are easy -- yet another example of our forward-thinking, next-generation company.
Hope you didn't buy WC stock!
SD
âoeWho knew something as harmless as willful ignorance could end up having real consequences?â
For even more interesting views, check out this one
Random Musings
Actually, in one key way, UUNET is already gone. UUNET has always been one of the main channels for spam broadcasting (maybe because they were first, maybe because they were biggest, maybe because their sales staff accepted anyone (including previously-terminated customers), maybe because their abuse department was slow, I'm not sure).
But during the past few months, I've seen no responsive action to abuse and spamming complaints. It appears that Worldcom may simply have closed down the abuse department.
At one point, I researched (lots of tracerts) and then concluded that more than 90% of the spam I get, comes from servers whose internet connections are through UUNET.
If I could just shut off the pipe to block everything coming from any UUNET/Alter.net/Worldcom customer, I'd do it. I think that single step would eliminate 90% of incoming spam and probably only a handful of legitimate emails.
-- http://www.MarkWelch.com/ Pleasanton California
I'm going to go a little off topic here, but this is my personal analysis of why we are seeing so many large companies like WorldCom collapsing in on their own corruption.
We all know that power and money doesn't circulate within a vacuum. Everything in the world is tied together, so that when one force of influence diminishes another will rise to take its place. The five main players I see in the modern world economy are - The governments, big business, small business, unions, and workers/individual consumers. The dynamics and fairness/wealth distribution of an economy are highest when there is a balance of influence between each of those forces. Historically, they are rarely balanced (and in some countries they are completely imbalanced), but I think the opportunities to correct it are greater than ever now.
As you may guess, I believe that the weight of influence in the American economy (in a concerted push since the early 80's) has tipped to predominantly favour big business and big government/military. Since America's economy is twice the size of number 2 - Japan - it controls global economic policy and as such is creating mirror economies to its own around the world. This imbalance is spreading like an epidemic around the world, seriously affecting other countries who model themselves off America - like my own country Australia.
So, what can be done about it? It seems a rebalancing isn't going to happen on its own, or at least not until the current situation degenerates to a point where violent revolution is needed to fix the problem. I guess there's several paths that could be chosen but here are two off the top of my head. One - allow the current consolidation of small and medium sized business into large/uber businesses to continue but restore power to the unions. Two - shift all laws that favour big business to favour small business instead.
Personally, I favour the latter. A society run by small business is far less likely to have organised and entrenched corruption - eg Would Dick Cheney have been swayed by the CEO of a company that controlled only one or two power stations? What benefit would a government get by helping out small companies that can't contribute many campaign funds and have little influence around the nation?
Anyhow, I think I'll cut the sermon off here. I think +5 troll and +5 offtopic is a good enough effort for today!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm sick and tired of people trying to relate everything bad to terrorism. I highly doubt that this MCI guy was deliberately sabotaging anything, but that's not even the point. "Terrorism" is when you do bad things to inspire terror. Terror is a key mechanism in terrorism! If you, say, sabotage the US economy slowly by eroding investor trust over the course of months or years, that's surely harming us, but it's not terrorism!
Here's an example of some very effective terrorism: the recent "dirty bomb" thing. It's effective because the average American knows squat about radiation. Americans are so stupid that they won't buy irradiated food because they think that it's radioactive! The effect is compounded by TV "journalists" who know just as little, but are more than happy to trumpet the term "dirty bomb" over the airwaves for at least a week. And our beautiful executive branch is so eager to trumpet their success in foiling the plot that they play up the danger such a device poses in stead of spreading some usefull information about how radioactive materials work. Hello!? I bet that the actual terrorists are scratching their heads, wondering if they should retire and just let the US gov. do all their work instead.
</rant>I heard on the news tonight that upwards of 900 may be laid off sometime before the end of the week (900 "boxes" are prepared), previously the numbers were between 300-600.
Im glad I got out when I did, but I still have a lot of friends still there that this will affect.
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
If you have it in your area, get Roadrunner Business Class. We looked into a Frac. T1 from WorldCom, and Roadrunner was faster and cost half as much. The "Business Class" is seperate from the residential, and much faster (not that res. is bad - it's what I'm on). Of course, T1 costs are related to your location, so YMMV.
i enjoy seeing them (the unsavory executives) personally fail
Except that the exec's rarely if ever "fail" by any common sense standard. They almost never end up in jail (where they belong), and invariably walk away with more money then you, me, and a hundred of our best friends will make in a lifetime. If failure is a bum resume and ten million bucks in the bank, I'll take that over a nice resume and a mortgage any day.
was one of those people laid off. I can remember chuckling a little when I learned that my severance package was "tied up in court" but that I'd see it down the road. Good thing I've heard that one before and knew I'd have a better chance of seeing a stable microsoft OS in my lifetime. The worst part about this one is how things were handled. The long time employees were still talking about how the Rigas's would save the day even when word of their 3.6 billion dollar theft from company coffers hit the news. Most of them were completely convinced that everything would be alright. Given the scope of this disaster, ABS knew full well it was going to happen when they hired me, and outright lied to me about how stable the company was and where it was headed. They lied to at least 5 new people in the department I joined also. For those of you that don't know, Adelphia Corporate is located in Coudersport, PA. It's a quaint little northern Pennsylvania town about 30 miles from the NY border. Population 2500. About 400 houses, homes and small businesses. A McDonalds, A Subway, oh and a 9 billion dollar telecommunications company. It's also 45 miles from NOTHING AT ALL. The makings for a great Stephen King novel. Tons of people displaced by the tech decline risked everything to move to the middle of nowhere for half the pay. When the layoffs came, they got rid of all the new people. The idea being to try to save some face in the community by keeping the people that were born and raised in Coudersport. Some of the new folk that were laid off had bought houses there. I feel for those people the most. As someone that's used to getting company's shot out from under me, I rented. My bad habit of eavesdropping on upper management let me know two weeks ahead of time that I'd be gone. I was actually relieved to be getting off the sinking ship early. Now I'm enjoying a very large unemployment check that Adelphia has to pay for. I figure I'll suck about 25 grand out of them then get a job. For the time being I'm kicking back, sipping drinks, and watching cable. I have no bills, so I have no worries. It's good to be prepared. I feel the most for the town of Coudersport. It really is a nice place. Absolutely beautiful. It was nice driving a mile to work and worrying more about hitting a deer than traffic or having my stereo stolen. I really didn't feel the need to lock my door. Nobody there does. No crime, no drug problem, great school, perfect place to start a family. The American Dream. The local economy there is centered around Adelphia, and ABS. The Rigas's own at least 90 percent of the town. I saw massive evidence that they truly love their small northern mountian town. They invested a fortune (granted, it was probably stolen money) trying to save it from tumbleweeds. They built a multi-million dollar data center in the middle of nowhere. They built their corporate headquarters in that same middle of nowhere. They employed the whole town, and gave loans to many townspeople. It's sad to know that within a few years, Coudersport will be an empty zipcode. There will be nothing there to support the town. The Rigas's will no doubt move to Buffalo or Phili. The datacenter will stand empty. The people left in town will move to Wellsville or Bradford (where they make Zippo Lighters) and seek new employment. Imagine a small town where a military base has been closed, and multiply the effect by 3. That's what it's going to be like. Slow motion Hiroshima with no boom. The only positive I can think of is the demise of the corrupt local goverment there. Since dead towns don't have courts, the world will be slightly better once the coudy courthouse is empty. I'd like to give a shout out to those left behind in the UNIX dept. I hope yall are hanging in there, and finding better jobs (If you all haven't been laid off already). You were all really great people (ScottU sucks though =P ). Make sure you file for unemployment at:
http://www.dli.state.pa.us
immediately after you are laid off. I can't get the year of my life back that was stolen from me by Adelphia, but I can sure as hell get every last cent I can. Good Luck!
The most important thing any republican needs to know.
Yes, but those people in those mutual funds have been soaking up windfall profits for the last decade.
If you want your money to be safe, go stick it in Citibank (or your local equivalent) and earn next-to-no interest. If you want to make better returns, go invest in a variety of blue-chips (and accept that one or two of them might go bust every so often, but the cumulative return will be higher). If you want to make big gains but are prepared to lose big, go play with derivatives or invest in startups.
Every time you invest in the stock market, or get somebody else to do it for you, there's a risk of losing money. I've had some money in a mutual fund for the past five years (in Australia). Some quarters, the net value goes backwards signifcantly. Overall, my investment has doubled in value, and even taking inflation into account, I've made a good gain. But it might halve in value tomorrow. That's the risk you take.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Nah...
Maybe for a few more years, but long-term outlook for telecom companies is dismal. VoIP was a buzz word for awhile but sort of disappeared as the dot com bubble burst. But that's temporary. VoIP will eventually spell the end of traditional "long distance companies." At best these companies will stop providing "LD service" and just provide Internet backbone service--because that service is capable of doing what it does now AND handling our voice calls.
I don't pretend to know exactly how it will shake out... But in 10-15 years, max, we will each have access to a data "port." That port will be our Internet access, cable/content access, and our telephone service. It will be a flat monthly rate (possible exception for PPV), and international long distance will be free.
In an economy and market where I can send a 100MB to virtually anywhere in the world for free, the time for paying some mumber of cents per minute to call that same place in the world is limited.
*gesturing wildly towards sig*
:)
Here's a philosophical question for y'all: Who's worse, the CFO who skims a few billion off the top, or the day-traders that are (knowingly or unknowingly) looking for this kind of behavior so they can take their share as well? Are Enron investors outraged at the amoral actions of chief executives, or outraged that their amoral actions lost them money instead of gained?
On the bright side, UUNET going down will take all the associated spammers with them.
Actually, in one key way, UUNET is already gone. UUNET has always been one of the main channels for spam broadcasting (maybe because they were first, maybe because they were biggest, maybe because their sales staff accepted anyone (including previously-terminated customers), maybe because their abuse department was slow, I'm not sure).
UUNET was around back when the net was forming and the battle was to get people access, not to cut off the abusers. Like Gary Gilmore (sun co-founder, cygnus founder, gnuthian) who runs an open mail relay out of ideology, UUNET would try to give anybody access.
(I believe that at one point you could get an instant UUNET email-via-uucp feed by calling a 900 number and paying by the minute for connect time. I think that's still there for anonymous FTP from their archives.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Yeah, the horror. Stop treating your people like the stuff you scrape off the bottom of your shoe.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
The market, though, bailed out of Worldcom long ago. Look at their chart. Their stock peaked at $60 back in 1999. They dropped below $2 in May 2002. They're down to $0.79 right now. Most of the drop was long before this latest revelation.
WHat?
What demand?
The dotcom bust is exactly because there is no demand for telecom services that 25 providers can last on. They are ALL bleeding money, and hard. They over-invested in an infrastructure that no longer is around. thousands of EXPENSIVE MILES of fiber lay dormant! Primary ISP's are feeling the heat when they should be rolling in it. SO, no, the money is not rolling in.
ANd excite/@home died because it cost too much per subscriber install to recap the costs.
fslg503-985-8686503-985-8686503-985-8686503-985-8
I saw this article on the net a while back, quite appropriate. Basically a list of the biggest screwups and questionable business practices in the last year or so. Wonderful for getting figures of exec bonuses [?] who drown the companies they work for. /. lameness filter is bitching and moanin about the text file, so here is a link.
6 04 , 0.html
Alas, the
http://www.business2.com/articles/mag/0,1640,38
It also has a nice commentary on Balmer's monkey dance, with pictures.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
The former.
I make my daily bread by predicting which companies will fail to live up to their hype and then short-selling their stock. I also invest on the long side, but this year, it's a lot easier to find stocks going down than stocks going up.
So I make money by finding the next Enron (I think it's going to be Computer Associates). And I'm outraged by Enron and Worldcom. For the record, I've never had a position in Enron or Worldcom, and I am short CA.
Short sellers are part of the ecosystem of the market that help broom out the hype and corruption. But there is so much corruption now, it's disgusting. I should have to work hard to find a Worldcom, not see clusters of them splashed across a non-financial news site.
When will it end? It ends with capitulation. It ends when a whole fucking Beowulf of these companies collapse at once, in a big crescendo of panic, when everybody and their brother finally pukes up the evil stock, and the questionable stock, and the blue-chips, every damn thing on the market, indiscriminately.
And that's when I can cover all my shorts and pay some reasonable prices for some quality companies that actually make and sell stuff that customers actually buy.
they are just dishonest.
We need to start holding upper management legally responsible for this crap. Guarantee long jail sentences in an ass-slamming federal prison (Not club fed) and this shit will stop.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Enron, Worldcom, Microsoft?
(Discovered by Ksosez on #mozillazine.)
The shareholder is always right.
VOIP is the biggest joke in the telcom world right now. Without spending a buttload of bucks on QOS you can't get half the quality that people demand for Voice. When you spend the money to get QOS, any cost advantage you had is neutralized. The only reason anyone cares about it is it's the only way CSCO can attempt to sell stuff to the RBOC's. Except it's not working. As Public Enemy said "Don't Believe the Hype"
An[d] even though anybody else has little to do with WCOM, the whole market is going to plunge.
... You'd be surprised who will be hurt, because you don't know who has exposure. The investors don't know who either, so they'll avoid everybody until they find out.
For good reason.
1) Worldcom is MCI and UUNET. MCI is the first of the competitive long distance companies and the second largest telecom. UUNET is the first commercial ISP and one of the largest. Both may just go away now.
2) Bankruptcy of something as large as Worldcom can affect a lot of other operations. While the people who buy the pieces will probably keep them running, the people they bought equipment and owe money to can probably kiss it goodbye (along with future orders they were counting on and building equipment to fill). So can everybody who bought their stock or bonds: Banks, retirement funds, money market funds, bond funds, corporations who parked some of their cash reserves in those funds,
3) Also if they go belly-up, their stuff gets sold at bankruptcy-auction prices, like ten cents on the dollar or less. Equipment winds up on E-bay and equipment manufacturers find themselves competing against their own stuff. Bottom drops out of market and equipment manufacturers suffer still more. If the buyers keep MCI and/or UUNET running, they now have working networks for which they paid nearly nothing. So they can drop their prices almost to the cost of operation and undercut competitors who had to pay for (and are still paying for) their equipment. The other tecoms and/or ISPs tighten belts further and/or start operating at a loss and also go belly-up. Down go more suppliers, more investors, more associated industries. Maybe some of THOSE go belly-up, and the fire spreads further.
4) It's another accounting scandal. (Anderson again. Oops.) This will make investors leery of other companies, raising the perceived risk of further financial scandal. ("Once is chance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.") The value of stocks and corporate bonds is ONLY what people are willing to pay for them at any given instant, and people base their valuation on perceived risk vs. benefit. If the risk just got bigger than the benefit, they won't trust stocks and bonds and won't buy them. The whole market tanks.
A broad drop the market from this makes perfect sense to me.
We know who loses in this game, obviously anyone with any vested interest in WorldCom.
$64,000 question is, who *wins*?
Although not as prevalent, I'm sure this sort of "book-cooking" goes on *all the time* at random big company (corporate interviewer to accountant: what does 1+1=? Accountant: Whatever you want it to be).
Who bailed on the stock so fast that it lost 78% of it's valuation? Who had placed the shorts well ahead of "knowledge" of this event?
Well, there was investigation when 9-11 happened and some people had big money shorting AMR and UAL. I wonder who's making money off this?
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Good point, that's pretty accurate in my opinion. Of course, Lex Luthor in Superman IV had the best plan of all. Steal tenths of a penny from all the banks. They'll never really see them disappearing but you'll see them adding up. Refresh my memory if you know the details.
By the way Luthor would've gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for that damn Superman.
But I didn't expect so much fraud. The numbers from the Internet companies were terrible, but honest; you could predict failure from the financial statements. I didn't anticipate phony numbers from hundreds of major, established companies.
We need to put a few dozen CEOs and CFOs in jail to restore confidence in the economy. Top management needs to be so afraid of going to jail that they don't dare cook the books.
That's because dope dealers don't give billions to the political parties each year and big business does...
"Information wants to be paid"
+1,000,000 informative :D
A particularly impressive page: The Corporation As Feudal Estate. The scholarship and knowledge of historical detail here is awesome. Again, thanks!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/24068.html
:-)
However, having untold billions in the bank should help a little
First off, Worldcom is simply screwing itself. Unfortunately, millions of people are going to feel the pain.
Now, on to the fun part...
You said "dont we already have an organisation for global jurisdiction over anything and everything: the US government".
WHY THE HELL NOT? The rest of the world is mostly a putrid cesspool, from what I've seen on TV, the net, and magazines. Europe and Japan are mostly cool, but the rest of the planet, at least from the point of view of being a human being, sucks. Nobody else is stepping up to the plate, so it looks like it's up to us, the U.S. people. do you really enjoy seeing people starve to death, get tortured endlessly, like in abject squalor, all because some petty dictator or mullah decides he wants to mess with their lives? I say, if we can do something about it by attempting to bring democracy to them and it makes us look like a world government, great. Let's get on with it. I'm actually VERY glad to be a part of a nation that has the power to form other nations by verbal command.
--- Think of it as evolution in action ---
Those 1 percent are basically the best of the best and as such they deserve what they have. ..
Remember Bill Gates did not inherit these billions
Mr Gates has never been a poor man, he comes from a rich family. Also he got his foot in the door with IBM through direct family connections.
It's similar to a couple of movies that were made some time back, Escape from New York and Escape from L.A.. In both, "prison" was an isolated society without rules. Persons convicted of certain crimes were dropped in the middle and left to make it on their own. If you don't want to live with the lawful, live with the lawless.
So yes, in a way, we do sort of condone it, but it's not like prison guards are supposed to let it happen if they see it. It's one of those things that we hope will make people think twice about breaking the law, since prison itself isn't such a great deterrent. Realistically, we can't eliminate it, so we capitalize on it. 6 months in prison isn't so bad; 6 months in prison with the possibility of being sodomized, however, is something to think about, especially if you are some soft corporate executive.
In case you haven't read enough to figure it out yet I'll tell you.
What he did was "inflate earnings" by nearly $4b. This is normally using a couple of methods.
1. They can ignore expenses or report them in a way that doesn't count against profits.
2. They can inflate revenue by using tomorrow's sales in today's profits.
I haven't seen exactly what they did yet, maybe it's a combination of both. Either way, nobody took the money in cash, they just lied about the company's profits.
Vanguard
PS I used to feel "a little" sorry for Anderson, the accounting firm. Now it seems like looking the other way was part of their corporate culture. I'm glad they're going out of business now.
That which does not kill me only makes me whinier
I think you're missing the point. Nobody is saying that Cisco deserves to be paid again for a router that WCOM has already paid for. What is being said is that if WCOM's assets are sent to auction, a company that is looking for a Cisco router now has one more used router to bid on rather than purchase a new router from Cisco. That's money that isn't going to Cisco and won't be increasing their revenues.
"This is untrue"
Really? Can you show me the document that says you'll get anything back from the money you and your employer "invested" on your behalf in FICA?
You can't.
Congress might fold it (unlikely), change the eligibility requirements (likely), change the benefits (certain). Anything could change, and specifically, you aren't guaranteed anything other than you have to pay
So FICA has an IOU from the treasury, but your name isn't involved anywhere. So YOU aren't owed anything.
But you OWE 15.4% on all your wages to this mythical retirement plan. Fortunately, your employer is NICE enough to pick up 1/2 the tab.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Further example: Apple Computer, which during the early 90's hemmoraged money like a sieve, even though they had revenues of 8 billion a year, they were losing up to $400 million a quarter. Enter steve jobs, who has made the company profitable for 9 of the last 10 quarters even though its yearly revenue has shrunk, all the while putting out new and innovative products (ipod, flat panel imac, cube). How much is Jobs salary? $1 a year. After 3 years of working for a dollar a year the board of directors had to finally give him some compensation in the form of stock options. Unfortunately those options are worthless ecause they excercise at $45 a share and apple is at ~$17 a share. Jobs works because he loves apple, not because of any other reason, and its too bad we dont have more CEO's like him.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Not that you need much convincing, but this article over at the NYTimes is rather interesting, considering recent events. It talks about the extremely rough times that telecom companies are going through, and leaves open the possibility of a complete meltdown of that market. Scary, because as you said this affects everyone in the tech industry.
If Worldcom/MCI/UUNet dies, what happens to the internet?
The only advantage I see is that maybe the flow of spam will slow when routers start getting their plugs pulled. hehe.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
So yes, in a way, we do sort of condone it, but it's not like prison guards are supposed to let it happen if they see it. It's one of those things that we hope will make people think twice about breaking the law, since prison itself isn't such a great deterrent.
Gee, I think you would have a hard time showing "forced butt rape" to be written in any penal statute anywhere in the nation. People get sentenced to prison, not forced rape. If you want to change the law, then change the law. Until then rape is against the law and should be as vigorously prosecuted as any other.
Can't wait till they haul one of your sons off to jail for something relatively minor, and the next thing you know he's somebody's bitch.
I think we should return to the original constitution and have a confederacy of states
You wouldn'thappen to live in the southern United States, by any chance, would you? I got news for you, the South LOST the civil war.
Corporations may look on EBay for this stuff, but more likely they will find it through resellers that buy it through auction/liquidation; the 'remarketed' equipment market is a large one, and it's where my company buys much of its IT hardware. Benefits vs. EBay are service and support; the remarketed stuff can be certified for original vendor support, whereas with an 'all-sales-final' vendor, you take your chances.
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Of course anyone accusing the administration of such a cynical ploy would be evil and unpatriotic.
And while the press argues over the terror alert the World Com crooks will be collecting their $1.6 million a year pensions.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
"WorldCom said restating these improper transfers would cut earnings by $6.4 billion for 2001 and $1.4 billion for the first quarter of 2002."
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
Three ideas:
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
Of course, the reason that companies began offering huge stock options was as a means of directly tying company performance to CEO salaries, which wasn't a bad idea at all. If a CEO ran a company into the ground then the stock would be devalued and their personal compensation would suffer.
The assumption was that the CEO you hired to run your company would not place his own personal well-being over that of the company itself. That's not really unreasonable; all employers must place some trust their employees, and I'd guess that many of us here are in a position where we could abuse our own administrative authority for personal gain if we were dishonest bastards willing to do so.
Unfortunately it's now become clear that some CEOs and many of their cronies are, indeed, dishonest bastards. Nothing more than scam artists and thieves, with major accounting firms complicit in the crimes.
the capital system is, by definition, and efficient market. all company news is built into the current stock price,
No, no, no...in Worldcom's case, the 'company info' that was built into the stock price was completely false. This led to a stock price that was way out of line with its true value- not because investors made an educated choice based on accurate information, but because they were misled.
Actually the exercise price on the latest options (7.5 million of them) is $18.30, which is not so far away.
These guys are worse than the silly ragheads who hijacked a plane and killed 3000 people on September 11th. They've done more harm to our economy, I don't think that's up for debate. Good companies can now not get investment dollars because these bastards abused the system and lied and cheated.
So, tell me - if fucking up our economy causes people to lose jobs, lose houses, eat less healthy, and those of us still with jobs to work harder to health-threatening levels because we're afraid to get fired, and the massive amounts of poverty this generates, which leads to higher crime rates, teen pregnancy, illiteracy, and government default on loans, why the hell are we spending billions of dollars on a huge "ministry of truth" style agency to listen in on our phone calls for mad suicide bombers, and yet we leave organizations like the SEC critically underfunded to the point where they've got like a dozen underpaid accountants devoted to the job of monitoring tens of thousands of publicly traded companies.
Part of rebuilding after September 11th was improving security precautions on airline travel so that people could trust flying again.
Why in hell is nothing being done to restore people's faith in corporate accounting and the stock market?
For one, I hope we have armed federal martials at WorldCom RIGHT FUCKING NOW, making sure they're not shredding truckloads of documents. Because with Enron/Anderson, somebody dropped the fucking ball.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Reality check: The US government does not want
to join the effort of creating an international,
independent criminal court.
Why?
Because they (the US government) don't want to
be accountable to anyone else for their actions.
They don't want US citizens and especially US
soldiers to be checked against the international
rules of e.g. Human Rights they claim to defend.
This is their actual reason.
See the recent reports about the "Hague Invasion
Act" of US congress.
I fear a superpower that doesn't want to be
accountable.
------------------
You may like my a cappella music
Perhaps it's time to implement flap-dampening in the financial markets?
/long-term/ factors, cause short-term wouldnt be available and mid-term (eg 6 months) would have little value, because the possibility would be there that in the mid-term when they want to sell/buy lag time might be one or two months and they'd be caught out.
put an arbitrary lag time in between buy/sell orders. Scale this lag time according to stability of the market. Put upper and lower bounds on the lag factor. eg minimum of 1 week, max of 3 months.
In very stable times, you'd have, say, a week between order and execution, if something caused the market to become volatile, lag factor would increase accordingly, up to say, 3 or 4 months. In times of imbalance (selling > than buying), the lag factor would increase and dampen it / slow it down, and in times of stability (selling ~= buying) the lag factor would be at a minimum and more responsive. Volume would not be affected - as long as the market stays reasonably stable.
This would force people to make stock decisions based on
So the market be dampened from volatility. Investors would need to play it on a long-term basis, which would need neccessitate quite 'frank' accounting practices - which would be lobbied for and put in place.
anyway..
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
Excellent, that's what I requested, a correction.
Where was Luthor this time around? We all know Pryor failed, post-speedball-explosion.
I'm getting a bit tired of all the whining.
I don't recall hearing much bitching and holier-than thou economic speech making when everything seemed to be going well.
The biggest advantage of free markets and societies is that they are able to clean up their mistakes. In any system, mistakes are going to be made with allocating capital (financial and personal). The capitalist system is the only one that allows the mistakes to be recognized and cleaned up.
It's sad what's happening to people that depended on Enron, WorldCom and all of the rest. I refuse to believe, however, that this the ultimate condemnation against the United States and society. There's a reason why the Soviet Union collapsed, why China is still a 2nd rate economic power, and why growth in most of Europe has stagnated during the past few years: market economies with a minimum of regulation are better for everyone in the long run.
How to protect yourself from getting splattered in the short run:
1. diversify your investments, both financially and personally
2. educate yourself about how the economy works, what's happened in the past. There's no excuse for ignorance these days
3. learn to think critically about economic and investing matters. Anyone with any kind of sense could see that the US stock market bubble was bound to burst, and that the results would be nasty
4. make "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" your goal, not "greed, fear, and anxiety"
We need to put a few dozen CEOs and CFOs in jail to restore confidence in the economy. Top management needs to be so afraid of going to jail that they don't dare cook the books.
Yeah, and not some minimum-security country club, either. Send them to Federal Pound-Me-In-The-Ass Prison, write "child molester" or "rapist" on their foreheads with a Sharpie on their first day, and toss them right into general population.
Our justice system needs to start making examples of the right people. CEOs who sink companies, ruin careers, and destroy hundreds or thousands of employees' financial well-being in the process are the right people. Some kid who sold a shroom to an undercover cop at a Phish concert is not the right person.
~Philly
FORBES suits now reading slashdot [yahoo.com] for up to the minute technical information.
Behave yourselves trolls, you are "providing senior-level business readers with access to cutting-edge, high-tech content"
ROFLMAO I thought you were bullshitting me until I clicked the link. MOD THAT PARENT POST UP! Should we all give a collective shudder when www.goatse.cx hits the NASDAQ? I know I will.
"Face it, a nation that maintains a 72% approval rating on George W. Bush is a nation with a very loose grip on reality.
Uh, no. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Prosecutors and law enforcement are extremely reluctant to go after anything but the simplest cases of fraud (cheque scams, credit card theft, and so forth) because they are so complex and require a huge amount of specialised expertise; on top of that, fraud has a significant MEGO factor, and the defendants tend to be pillar of the community types, rather than easily convicted dirtballs.
For example, the reason the New York DA settled with Merrill Lynch in the case for their allegedly fraudulent promotion of dud stocks. Even though, to the public, it looks pretty open and shut (analysts leave document trail complaining that they're being forced to say good things about bad companies), the DAs office decided the difficulty of obtaining a conviction was such that it was better to let Merrill Lynch off with a trivial fine and no admission of guilt.
And right now, the odds are better at the racetrack.