WorldCom to File for Chapter 11 Protection

Mantour writes: "To everyone's big suprise ;), Worldcom is going for Chapter 11. 'The Chapter 11 filing by WorldCom would follow once high-flying companies like energy trader Enron Corp. and Global Crossing Ltd., which crumbled into bankruptcy amid a crush of accounting investigations by federal regulators.' You can get more info in this Yahoo story" Update: 07/22 12:21 GMT by T : mnordstr points out a CNN report calling this "the largest bankruptcy ever."

Comments

So, Here's the Question

[Fished]

I am a Worldcom employee, and here's my question, that I cannot seem to find an answer to anywhere. What does this mean to employees? I find lots about investors, bankers, and bond-holders, but very little about employees.

Re:So, Here's the Question

[stripes]

What about customers as well?

Assuming they are selling a service at a cost that at least covers current costs (ignoring build out a deployment cost!) then either they will keep running it in chap 11 (they can choose to break contracts without peanilty...so they may decide to stop offering a service if they are not making money on it! they can also decide to renogiate any long term contacts they wish, even if they are profitable)....er where was I? Ah, either they will run it in chap 11 and keep running when/if they re-emerge from bankruptcy, or they will sell it off with the infastructure to some company that wants to keep running it.

If the service is not profitable they may try to raise the price, or sell it off, or discontinue it. This is pretty much the golden opertunity for that sort of thing, so if you are getting a "great deal" on something from them, that might not last.

Bush really dropped the ball

[evilviper]

So, Bush wanted to American people to think he was doing something about the rashes of corporate corruption. So what does he do? He creates a task force, and doubles the (very small) penalties for this sort of thing.

You know what he should have done... If he had said that this sort of activity will fall under the mob laws, this would stop, and we'd know the president was not corrupt. If that happened, that would mean anyone involved in illegial activity would have full liability. You wouldn't just get 10 years in jail, then get out with all your ill-gotten money in-hand. The feds would be able to take away all your assets to pay off debts. Houses, cars, bank accounts, all taken away.

But then half of congress would end up in jail, and probably Bush himself.

Re:It was the fraud, not the clueless business pla

[Zeinfeld]

So after Bush gets into the Whitehouse by promising to run the country like a business we suddenly discover how many of the businesses are being run. So how is this a negative, the corporations didn't start cooking the books on election day.

You asked 'how is this a negative' when really what you are trying to ask is 'how is this his fault'.

The worldcom affair is not Bush's fault, however it is a negative because:

1. Make Bush CEO of USA Inc was his principal campaign theme

2. Bush is implicated in corrupt share deallings the full details of the SEC enquiry have yet to be released, but it is already apparent that Bush had signed a lockup agreement promising not to sell the shares at the time he sold. If Bush knew that the share sale that had caused the lockup had had to be cancelled because of the state of the company he was trading on insider information.

3. Chenney and White The VP and the secretary of state for the army are implicated in major corruption scandals.

4. Bush's hypocrisy a day after failling to accept responsibility for his own actions the president takes it upon himself to call on CEOs to do just that.

5. Fuzzy math was used to justify the Tax cut. The books at Enron and Worldcom were not cooked to half the extent that Bush and Co cooked the budget to get the Tax Cut for his rich friends through.

6. The corrupt corporations were run by Republicans with strong links to senior republicans Kenneth Lay was famously a friend of GWB and lent his corporate jet for his campaign. Worldcom was run by Bernie Ebbers who was one of Trent Lott's principal campaign contributors.

So yes, while Worldcom is not the fault of the President it makes people a lot more aware of his shortcommings and is therefore quite justifiably a negative for him.