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WorldCom Fraud Doubles
Silvaran writes "No, this isn't a repeat story. WorldCom claims another $3.3 billion accounting error. That's about $7 billion, for those that are counting. Wish I had that kind of cash to miscalculate on my income tax forms." There's also a NYT story. I love how the news outlets are saying, "error", "irregularity", "problem", as if this was all some sort of tragic accident, instead of laying out the obvious truth, "criminal fraud committed with full knowledge it was a crime".
...that you never hear of any accounting 'errors' that make the company look less wealthy than it is?
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
The justice department needs to stop being a bunch of whores and realize that "limited liability" has to do with financial, not criminal liability. Fraud is fraud, theft is theft. Put them in the same cell with a guy doing 5 years for forging a check. It makes me sick.
I spent a year in Iraq looking for WMD and all I found was this lousy sig.
What bugs me the most about all this is how people still don't seem to make a big deal about it. Here's a good way to think:
Imagine every crime that has been committed against you that cost you money. This can include having your bicycle stolen, your car stolen for a joyride and crashed into a wall... your house vandalized and your stereo ripped off, your credit card number hijacked, your wallet taken in a mugging, etc. Whatever cost you money. Now, try to remember the anger. Try to remember how pissed off you were. How much you would've loved to bash the punk's face in with a brick.
Now listen.
Corporate crime has stolen about twice that from you, and other investors and tax payers. You are an invesor if you have a retirement plan. You are a taxpayer if you have a job. Even if you don't in either case, your sales taxes go to governments, and governments are effected by the stock market. The total monetary cost per year of street crime in the United States is well below the total amount of money lost due to white collar corporate crime. That is money you should have in your assets right now.
The thief, the mugger, at least they have some balls about it - if you catch them, you could very well bash their faces in with a brick, then get them arrested by the police (who kick the living crap out of them if they try to run) and then end up in a federal "pound me in the ass" prison for quite a long time.
The white collar criminal is not caught. If he is, his company gets fined something around 1% of their earnings this quarter. If he personally is caught, he just gets sent to a minimum security country club for a few months.
And people don't seem very mad about this.
Pardon me for interfering with / analyzing your domestic policies.
What you are experiencing is quite normal. After a period of living out of touch with reality, you're falling out of the clouds. Gravity is a bitch.
Enron to me exemplifies that your power structure is far from ideal. Rather than having the people pay for the campaigns (through the national treasury), you have the corporations that care about profits and only profits buying influence in the political circles. Giving corporations a lot of power is generally a bad idea, since they care less about ethics and more about money.
Greed is essentially a destructive force. Greed fosters bad judgement and short-term benefits. The Enron and WorldCom people knew they were out of line, but the enormous payoffs kept them going even though their logic central must have been saying "you're way out of line, mister. this will collapse!". I would look really hard for executives who quit after the accounting fraud began. Some of them might have seen where this was going, and left the sinking ship with bloody hands - their common sense overpowering the greed.
As Aimee Mann sings - "it is not going to stop.. until you wise up". You really, really need to look at who you elect during the upcoming elections. Don't just look at the words, but examine the past. If you wish to come through this alive, you'll need wisdom and courage, not demagogues (sp?) and special interest representatives.
If this was not so damned serious, I would be experiencing some schadenfreude now, but this is too damn serious on a global scale. I really hope you'll learn your lessons and regain your balance.
Stop the brainwash
It goes into twenty to fifty $250 rounds of golf at Hilton Head Golf Club under the guise of a "management retreat."
It goes into the corporate learjet that whisks some of these officers away to the above two destinations.
It goes into the CEO's million dollar annual pension whether he retires a hero or gets the pink slip for delivering his company to chapter 11.
It trickles...straight up.
The tragedy isn't that this stuff happens. It is part of the human condition. Admit it. Most of us would do the same if we were in these fuckers shoes. The real tragedy is that we won't challenge this behavior until it is too late to make meaningful amends. Think Charles Dickens.
Naw, the problem isn't a lack of government bailouts -- it's your misunderstanding of WHY they bail these COs out.
Public Utilities? Fuck, those only affect PEOPLE. People can survive. Lockheed's failure directly affects the GOVERNMENT...it affects necessary defense contracts, and can you imagine the auction sales of Lockheed plans for those killer jets the second the plant closes?
Your problem is being too much of a humanist. Come over to the dark side of cynical realism, it's much more profitable.
Hey freaks: now you're ju