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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."
Sidgemore has already said he wants WorldCom to resemble his old baby UUNET more in the future, so anything not related to data transmission is likely on the block.
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.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Not all companies that file for bankrupcy go broke. Otherwise no-one would file for it.
-- RTFM:Slackware::Beer:Saturday
It's time to upport your local telesales representatives! They're underworked and overpaid! Make them think for their bread and butter!
This sig no verb.
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.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
WorldCom can still "go away". The government doesn't care who owns the network as long as it is operational. Don't confuse the two.
Why should we pay tax dollars to keep a monopoly up and running? I hope the government doesnt step in, the government should never step in to save any company unless its an absolutely vital company such as a food company, or water or electric company where peoples lives are on the line.
Worldcom is a communications company and I hate this corperate welfare shit, we cant get welfare, so why should they?
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I've been wondering about this a lot lately. I've worked at a number of places, been a fully paid regular type employee at IBM for about 5 years, a medium sized company for 2 years and a startup for about a year now. I've seen how things work at those companies and a number of their partners. I've seen a number of sleezy people in business but I've also seen my fair share of honest people and I can't imagine that there weren't whistle blowers.
All things being equal, and they are usually pretty fair. You have AAnderson cooking books at a number of places. Most of those places get audits by KPNG, Price Waterhouse, and others. Likewise you have AAnderson doing the audits at places those other firms account for. How can other accounting firms compete with a company that cooks the books with out also doing so? They audit their work and they should know because they have clients of their own and should have a good feeling for the state of the economy. I've been really amped on the stock market a long time, I've made some buck in it, lost some, for the most part done really well but I don't know how you can trust anybody now.
I can't believe that it's sleezy business becuase if it was just sleezy business then someone more sleezy would rat them out for blackmail or political reasons. Or someone honest would say something. I can't believe that top notch accounting firms would lie for each other and I don't see how they can compete against one firm that is turning losing companies in to profitable ones. Then I see W's response (twice the stay at the federal country club) plus all the politicians are benefitting from it in the first place.
The only thing that makes any sense to me is that lot's of companies are doing crooked accounting, everybody knows it and that's why there aren't any whistle blowers and that a couple more slow quarters than they are expecting is all it could take to wipe out a 100 year old company because they hide the losses and run out of hiding places.
I'm rambling a little but I look on the smaller scale and there have been a handful of the new small linux companies that have burned out in fireball and then people showed up at work with padlocks on the doors, and people were shocked.. The things that happend at Loki are the same types of things happening at WorldCom or Qwest, just on a smaller scale. The telcos are also pretty much a fail proof business if you're not expecting endless radical growth, you will have endless customers and cash flow, it's not a really risky business to run a long distance high speed network, people need that service. Has business come to this?
Sort of. If they court lets WCOM go into chap 11 the debt is all susspended, along with any pre-chap 11 bills of any kind. To re-emerge from chap-11 they have to show that they are no longer losing money each month, and that they have a "repayment" plan worked out with their creditors. The repayment plan is normally some variant of "screw you, for ever $1 we owed you you get $0.03 and one share of stock...ha ha ha!".
In other words chap 11 basically lets you strip off all the debt (or a huge percentage of it). It also lets you out of any long term contracts (to buy or sell!) that you didn't like, makes it easier to fire people. Oh, and they can "un lease" a building by taking all their stuff out of it and saying "no, were are not paying" to the landlord.
So "too much debt" is no longer WCOMs problem. It is the problem of banks that loaned money, and supplyers that sent goods on purchase orders.
Now I have a theory that the little telco's going bankrupt forced prices down (the little telcos suddonly had "free" infrastructure!) which screwed the medim size ones...and so on. Not just the bankruptcy of corse, it was mostly the drop of the "dot coms", but still I think the bankruptcy laws do have a bit of a chain reaction type thing.
While there will be a lot of folk pointing out that WorldCom had massive debts, that is not the primary reason for the chapter 11 filing. The banks would have been happy to go on lending if they could trust the books. The company was actually operating profitably - if the 3.8 billion was the limit of the fraud.
So why does a profitable company cook the books? The timing of the fraud makes it look like it was done to save Bernie Ebbers from going bankrupt personaly. He had taken out a massive loan from the company and used it to buy stock. When the market went south Bernie was left owing a third of a billion he could not repay.
The thing I find personally illuminating about all this business is that it turns out that a lot of high powered accountancy turns out to be incomprehensible for the same reason new age psychobabble is incomprehensible - it is complete bullshit.
The problem we now have is that nobody can trust any accounts, even those not audited by Arthur Andersen. While the accounting tricks were clearly being used to mislead in the Enron/Harken cases there are cases where a company might legitimately use a captive company. Equally it is not necessarily fraud when two companies buy from each other (a related party transaction) but how do you tell the difference between a genuine transaction and a fake one?
The problem that the US now faces is that foreign capital is rushing to get out as fast as it can. That may well cause interest rates to rise as the government is forced to fund the budget deficit with loans at higher and higher rates.
Whichever way you look at it this is the end of the line for corporate deregulation. Regulation is now going to be considered pensioner friendly and stockholder friendly. At the very least we will see the sweatheart deals arranged by Enron and the Gramms to exclude energy derivatives from oversight being swept away. But at the deeper level I think that politicians are not going to be able to score easy votes by dennouncing regulation.
It is very curious the way that the second Bush administration is shaping up so much like the first. Stratospheric popularity after an initially successful war in the middle east, then being mired in financial scandal (savings and loans) and a recession while the budget deficit ballooned.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
They are doing a debt for equity swap. In english, they are issuing more shares of stock in exchange for the retirement of some debt. This will result in less interest payments, ability to pay off the rest of the debt and have free cash flow to keep the company going. People should read the article. The reason for chapter 11 is for the debt to equity swap to take place, the company has to be legally under bankruptcy protection.
Well, sort of, anyway. ANyone remember when Inacom tanked? I was working for them at the time.
Luckily, I got picked up by a "competitor" who was also onsite at the same place, so I only had a week of questionability.
THe schematic is slightly different.. Inacom claimed they *might* fold.. they claimed they *MIGHT* declare bankruptcy, and they put themselves on the block to be purchased, in whole or in part. Other groups came in, looked decided "I want part of this, but they are going to crash anyway, so I will just wait and absorb their assets after the crash, rather than paying an inflated (read: more than bottom penny) price for them.
However, what Inacom DID do, was broadcast a message on Wednesday, saying everything was cheery, bankruptcy could be avoided, etc. On Friday we got a voicemail saying "the vast majority of Inacom employees have been let go. Pinkertons (I think.. one of hte security companies) employees will escort you from the site."
We sued, in a class action, for lost wages, and violation of the WARN act.. (if a company knows its tanking, and doesnt tell you, they are liable.) This suit is still in progress, as far as I know. And may be for several years.. seeing ANY money, including 401K money can be tough as well. Once the IRS gets ahold of it, they can hold it pretty much as long as they want. Especially if there was financial malfeasance within the company.. you may also find out your company did not pay as much into the 401, health, insurance, unemployment, as they claimed they had. ANd there is nothing you can do, really, once the corporation folds/loses all its assets. The individuals who ran it are blameless, and it is very very difficult to sue them personally. (Hence, corporations of one.. for that very reason).
Good luck.. hope it all works out for you.. but it is often ugly in the long run.
Maeryk
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
Obviously we would all prefer that these things never happened, but it's actually GOOD that they happen once in a while. The reason? It's proof that the system works.
What would be worse than the current system is to have corruption take root and never get cured, generation after generation. I'm sure everyone can find innumerable examples of this in the world.
This probably isn't the end of it; I'm sure more scandals will come to light before it's through. But given the fact that corruption WILL take root whenever you have people, it's good to know that these things are self correcting eventually.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Organized fraud leading directly to the impoverishment of tens of thousands and loss of thousands of jobs? Knowing and conspiratorial breach of trust at a public company reaping tens or hundreds or even billions of dollars in illicit profits? These are not serious crimes? Apparently some sadsack loser trying to sell an ounce of dope to some other pathetic nitwit is committing a bigger crime. Sheesh.
LOL.. this is almost funny. I love the fact that it is THE one guy in the hot seats fault. Not Congress. Not the SEnate. Not the last eight YEARS of ignoring signs and worrying about guys selling sawed off shotguns in the mountains rather than corporate scandal and greed.
There is a cycle here you'se guys arent noticing. (Or arent mentioning, anyway). After *EVERY* huge economic gain in this, our american society, companies tank like this. Its called "spending money you dont have". Hate to be a bible quoter.. but "Neither a borrower nor a lender be."
The issue isnt as much with the government allowing the companies to regulate themselves.. it is with the BANKS looking to turn huge profits on overnight and offshore loans. See, thats where the banks make money. ANd if they would pass anything more than even a cursory glance at a company's books, they might catch the cookage instead of loaning 3B to a company to aquire another company, and find out six months later its all cotton candy.
The president has a certain amount of expectation to speak on this, but he has no REAL control. He cannot magically wave his pen and make longer prison sentences. That requires an act of the full government. ANd as stated, they wont do it. How many of them do you think have taken payoffs from various companies? Or money for their camppaigns? Or thrown huge bones to these companies in pork barrel politics? If anyone, your senators and congressmen should be the ones you are screaming bloody murder to. Not the PResident.
Maeryk
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
The last paragraph parent post makes what I interpret to be an indirect shot at the current president's economic policies. While this may or may not be the intent of the post, the mindset that I have mentioned is common enough in media reports and ordinary conversation that I feel the need to rant about how I believe President Bush is getting the shaft for a problem he is not primarily responsible for creating.
I can't stand how many people claim that the political blame behind the Enron, WorldCom, and other fradulent companies' downfalls is solely that of President George W. Bush. I find that charge to be along the lines of claiming that Bush's foreign policy failures were the chief reason for last September's terrorist attacks.
As with the terror attacks, there were many causes for the ongoing meltdown of the United States capital market. The factors leading to the sudden bankruptcies of these large companies existed long before the current president moved into the White House, and some existed even before his father lived there. Most important among the causes: the executives themselves that lied about the state of their companies. In at least the Adelphia and WorldCom scenarios, it is pretty clear that blatantly criminal acts took place: they falsely claimed profitability to obtained credit from banks that would not have loaned them money if the banks knew that these companies were in fact losing money hand over fist. These executives should be jailed for AT LEAST 10 years (if they knew that these acts were ruining the company for their own personal benefit, then I would like to see them jailed for life) in addition to making as complete a restitution as possible for bondholders and stockholders.
In addition, the incentives behind this lying about companies' financial statemets has been around since the 1980's, when the "Greed is Good" mantra began to sweep Wall Street. Both in the 1980's (until October 1987) and in the 1990's the booming stock market encouraged companies to do whatever was necessary to boost their stock price. Also, especially in the 90s, the ridiculous growth of executive pay, primarily in the form of stock and stock options, gave executives a personal incentive to boost their share prices as soon as possible. Boards of directors, who also largely paid themselves in stock, turned their backs on their obstensible duties to protect shareholders' long-term interests to bolster their own short-term interests.
There were many economists who railed against these conflicts of interest and urged the SEC and Congress to pass new regulations regarding the nature of executive pay and how publicly traded companies were to be governed. But, with the economy appearing to continue to grow robustly, the federal government saw no need to rock the boat. Hell, stock prices grew substantially for 16 of the 18 years between 1982 and 1999 (IIRC, 87 and 90 were the only two down years for the Dow Jones average in that time), so The Market couldn't be wrong, right?
Presidents Reagan and Clinton essentially got a free pass for the way they allegedly handled the economy. All they really did was continue the charade of passing off a modestly growing economy as a tremendously growing economy and let their successors worry about it when it comes to reconcile Wall Street's figures with Main Street's. In addition to coming in at the end of a business cycle, both Bushes suffered tremendous external shocks that hurt the U.S. economy: the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 that caused oil prices to double plagued the first Bush's economy; the hijackings gave the current economy a significant body blow. Neither President can be accurately blamed for these problems.
Am I claiming that the current president or his father is infallible? Absolutely not. But using him as a scapegoat for problems that have infected the entire public and private sectors does a disservice to the president and leads to the political squabbling that will slow down the necessary reforms to the economy. The older Bush was in office for four years; Reagan and Clinton lived in the White House for eight years. GWB has barely been in office for 18 months. Which presidents do you think have had the biggest opportunity to influence economic policy since 1981? And another thing to keep in mind: before he can act, the president often needs the consent of another government body -- Congress.
Before pointing the finger at anyone or anything for a problem like today's business fiascos, one must realize that it's not that simple. If there were one cause, then it would have already been dealt with and confidence would already be on its way back into our stock markets. Our entire financial system needs to be tweaked; if one person or group ends up taking the blame for an entire economy's faults, it will end up being an injustice to everyone in the United States.
After graduating college I went to work at MCI, which was soon bought out by WorldCom. WorldCom is now in Chapter 11.
:)
After leaving WorldCom I went to work for McLeodUSA, which soon declared Chapter 11.
After leaving McLeodUSA I went to work for Yomu, which declared Chapter 7.
After leaving Yomu, I went to work for PGP Security, which doesn't even exist anymore.
Score: four for four.
Y'know, most people would be proud of batting 1.000. So why do I feel vaguely embarassed, foolish and ashamed?
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.
I thought bush got into the whitehouse by counting votes the way many of the businesses are being run?
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
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.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
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Please, go get a job at Microsoft.
None whatsoever. For now. Chapter 11 gives a company time to operate while it re-organizes, sells units, etc... without having to pay back creditors. It also means that pretty much everything that it does will have to pass muster with a bankruptcy judge, so it isn't a free ride. Eventually enough assets will be sold and the creditors paid off so that the company can emerge from Chapter 11, probably as a smaller, more focused organization. Or they may find that they cannot generate enough cash to pay off their creditors and then go into Chapter 7, at which point all the remaining assets will be liquidated.
A well-crafted lie appears unquestionable - Dama Mahaleo
-
(a) At any time after the commencement of the case but before
confirmation of a plan, on request of a party in interest or the
United States trustee, and after notice and a hearing, the court
shall order the appointment of a trustee -
(1) for cause, including fraud, dishonesty, incompetence, or
gross mismanagement of the affairs of the debtor by current
management, either before or after the commencement of the case,
or similar cause...
Fraud, check. Dishonesty, check. Incompetence, check. Gross mismanagement, check. There's certainly cause for the court to order the appointment of a trustee and kick out the current management.Comment removed based on user account deletion
Saying the banks could have just looked deeper and found the inconsistencies is like saying that if someone goes into a bank with a fake ID, and gets a loan under an assumed ID, the bank is at fault. The wole idea is that WorldCom broke the law by falsifying records... That means it would take a full fledged investigation to determine something was wrong. Come on, it's not unreasonable for a bank to assume a company is not breaking the law.
Why not? They assume I am breaking the law every time I cash a check with them. Some of them wont even honor checks drawn on their own accounts unless you have enough money in your OWN account with them to cover the cost of the check. Have you ever gone for a mortgage? I have had less invasive background checks done by the police. (but we wont go into that now.)
It lies on the bank to secure its billions of dollars of its depositors money. After all, theoretically, the bank answers to us, the peoples money who keep it afloat day to day.
Blaming congress rather than the president is borderline. The President is the Chief Executor and Chief Legislator. If he had exercised his powers to attempt to get such laws passed, and the senate did not go along with it, I would agree with you. However, it is also true that the Senate could do so on their own (but that takes much more time).
Hmm. You have a point. However, Bush has a very tough fight to get ANYTHING through congress at this point. There are enough Dem's on the hill who have sworn to oppose just about anything he tries that he has to be rather picky and choosy about what he tries to get done. And I think he has bigger fish to fry. (Or, thought he did, what with buildings blowing up, a war in the middle east, and another two wars brewing, one between Palestine and Israeal, and one between Pakistan and India). I think he's been pretty busy with other things, truth be told. But laying all the blame on him is kind of silly. Especially when these things *HAVE* been happening for the last umpteen years, and no-one else has had the desire to do anything about it either.
Again.. it boils down to how much money these CEO's and their respective companies have put in the pockets of the people who refuse to regualte them.. or the people who refuse to prosecute when they do get caught. Or who choose to hand forth extremely lenient sentences when they finally come before a judge or a review board.
After all, the laws already exist to enforce punishment on these things. Not everyone gets the Michael Milken Club Med prison treatment.
You could have fooled me. That's exactly what it appears to be. A corporation is designed with the intent to do anything within the law to make money. That mindset is a dangerous one, which is why companies are subject to laws designed specifically to regulate corporations. The fact that individuals inside a company went just too far is not unusual
You are right. It is not unusual. It should be however. The laws should be changed so that those responsible for running the companies into the ground at the expense of the stock holders and the workers should be personally liable. Their golden parachutes and multi-million dollar palaces and perks should be at risk, as well. Those smart enough to take their cash out before it gets ugly and sink it into material goods should lose those goods until they are in the position of those they have damaged on the way.
Of course, a lot of this would not happen if investors had a clue. The market of recent years has been one of rapid wealth and fast returns on big buys. That can only lead to artifially inflated stocks, and huge amounts of cash trading hands. Look at RedHat.. and see what ESR said about his "sudden millionaire status" when they IPO'd. He said he couldnt touch it for six months.. but a lot of other people made a lot of money on that stock in the first couple of days it was out. The system isnt broken.. but it sure aint perfect either.
maeryk
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
Where do you work now, and are they publically traded so I can short their stock?
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
WorldCom now has an official bankruptcy site. So far, there's nothing there but happy talk press releases.
Companies operating under chapter 11 do enjoy many interesting abilities, but the key aspect of the filing is the re-organization plan, which has to be agreed to by the creditors. This is not always an easy thing to arrange, and at some point creditors (as a group or individually) are allowed to fill their own plans for the reorganization, or request outright liquidation of the firm (chapter 7). Furthermore, Worldcom is or will soon be operating under debtor-in-possession (DIP) financing, which might also place severe restrictions on what they will be allowed to do. This is *not* going to be pleasant for anybody, especially Worldcom. The story at this point is that the company thinks they can use debt service savings to repay the banks (who are first in line) and get the bondholders to take equity, but if I'm a bondholder in this deal, I think I would have to insist that they cancel the existing common stock at the very least, which I curiously have *not* seen mentioned yet. And it's not clear that the bondholders could not do better in an outright liquidation scenario. Plus, there is the amusing prospect of serious litigation and criminal proceedings throughtout... I really don't see how this could go as quickly as the current leadership at Worldcom thinks it will, but maybe they really do have all their ducks lined up this time. We shall see.
Babar
Close, but no cigar. I've mentioned this before other places, but it needs mentioning again.
The real issue, the one that remained unresolved throughout the 20th century, is this:
Sometimes, there is really nothing to do.
Let that sink in for a minute.
In the 20s, we all got mobile with cars and got wireless with radio (RCA was like Yahoo!).
Once most of the people who wanted model-Ts and vacuum-tube sets had 'em, the market saturated, the bubble burst, and people couldn't figure out what to do.
It took WW-II to get 'em interested in something again. The sequel involving Communists and a space race was pretty exciting too.
Then in the early 90s, no more Commies (none that really mattered, anyway) but that was OK because computers had been rolling along quite nicely (a spinoff of the space race, actually) and the Internet, whoooh boy! That was something.
The first warning sign was when computers actually fell in price. For years, they were about $2000, and they kept getting faster. When they started noticeably dropping in price circa 1997/1998, I remarked that we might be getting saturated. We are now certainly saturated. Almost everybody who wants a PC has one. Almost everybody who wants dial-up Internet in the US has it.
Broadband might have helped us, but this is now an area where the bad economy feeds on itself: consumers won't shell out for broadband when the next paycheck is in doubt. They may even cancel their dialup.
People need something to do. They want something to do.
I believe FDR actually had the right idea with some of his programs--the ones that built lasting infrastructure such as the TVA and Skyline Drive (note, the forced relocation of mountain people was poor execution, but the *idea* of creating a recreational area was a good one). The problem is that GWB is imitating some of FDR's mistakes when it comes to creating *permanent* beurocracies. The biggest of these mistakes was social security, which is just a big Ponzi scheme that has to collapse sooner or later.
When people don't know what to do, government spending can be a viable option, but it needs to be temporary, constructive, and produce something useful. How about grants for commuter rail in cities where it would be appropriate (e.g., full funding for the Las Vegas monorail would be really cool). How about an Apollo type program to create 100 mpg and/or alternative fuel cars that people will actually want to buy?
Instead, we will probably just create a few more government agencies.
War is an option too, but with the US reluctance to actually get involved with postwar reconstruction efforts, it seems like a bad idea. Already, the Afghan government is showing weakness because of our reluctance to really help stabilize it. If Karzai can't maintain power, GWB will be a domestic *and* a foreign failure. I doubt we'll do much better in Iraq. It's a real pity too, because I bet we could *easily* round up 50,000 military-age people who would be willing to go to Afghanistan and keep it clean until the locals learned how to be civilized. It's the old men that don't have the stomach for it these days--a complete reversal from the 1960s.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
LOL.. this is almost funny. I love the fact that it is THE one guy in the hot seats fault. Not Congress. Not the SEnate. Not the last eight YEARS of ignoring signs and worrying about guys selling sawed off shotguns in the mountains rather than corporate scandal and greed.
Bush may not personally be responsible, but he and his father are so much involved in this sort of behaviour, and have been throughout their careers, that it's good to see the chickens coming home to roost.
I personally wouldn't be investing unless I had enough money to be a whale, rather than plankton, so to speak. Otherwise I'd be gambling on other people's honesty and the mechanisms of the State for reparation... and neither prospet fills me with confidence.
Hate to be a bible quoter.. but "Neither a borrower nor a lender be."
Isn't that specific phrasing from Hamlet, and wasn't Polonius being represented as a sanctimonious fool throughout the play?
deus does not exist but if he does