Slashdot Mirror
Enron's Kenneth Lay Dies
Don420 writes "This morning the biggest corporate criminal in modern history, Kenneth Lay, died of a massive coronary before he could receive his sentence. Lay was found guilty of being in charge of the scheme that had many lose their live-savings through a scheme of complex offshore holdings and is to thank for our having to live with Sarbanes-Oxely." From the article: "Enron filed for bankruptcy in December 2001 after investigators found it had used partnerships to conceal more than $1 billion in debt and inflate profits. Enron's downfall cost 4,000 employees their jobs and many of them their life savings, and led to billions of dollars of losses for investors."
Ken Lay was a regular rags-to-riches story. He grew up in Missouri and he was a son of a preacher. He was one of five children, and he grew this whole company, Enron, from nothing. Former employees told us constantly throughout the Enron trial that it was a great place to work, and that they felt devoted to him. They liked his friendliness. They liked his kind of folksiness. They liked his charm. But of course throughout the trial, he proclaimed that he was innocent throughout the trial and seemed very surprised when the verdict came in. We would see him come in every day. He is a man of tradition. He always wore a blue suit and he had the white shirt and the red tie. And he would always be a man of tradition. He would mingle with the people that were outside. His former employees. One employee that was so devoted to him that every day he came into court he would escort him into the courthouse. That was what the employees thought of him. They always thought that he was truly not the man behind all the scandal that they were being accused of and it seemed like he was even surprised the day of the verdict. He came out and talked to us. He seemed very friendly. We saw him when the verdict was coming in. He rushed to court from his office. He was always trying to work, do other things. He was not thinking that this would be the roadblock in his life. Ken lay was very friendly to us as the media, always willing to talk to us either on the way into court or on the way leaving court, despite what had happened in court at the time that day. We are now understanding that the most recent development in the Enron case was the Enron task force had asked for $183 million from both Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling to be part of the financial penalty in the case when the sentencing would happen this september.
Good Riddance.
Kenneth Lay tragically passes away due to a massive heart attack before he receives his sentence. Impeccable timing...
Two possible scenarios (in addition to the official version of events) come immediately to mind:
- or -
Either scenario seems equally likely, and much more likely than 'Ken keeled over because he couldn't keep his LDLs in check'.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
But to whom?
see you in hell!
'nuf said.
/. filters}
{damn
until I see a body. Just a little too convenient. /where the hell's my tinfoil hat?
This is a sig. It is like every other sig in the world, except that it is mine, and it is different.
Cue all the Ayn Rand fanatics ranting about what a great guy he was for defrauding all those evil "collectivists" and how horrible it is that the State oppressed a hero like him.
Kenneth Lay, inventor and founder of Wallstreet darling Enron, was found dead in his Malibu beach house this morning. No other details were available. Even if you didn't love his funny little 10-K statements, you have to revere him as a hero beloved by all. He will be sorely missed.
Not to be crass, but given that he was a guy of some means who was potentially looking at some serious jail time, I'd like to see his dead body before I believe it.
"Had a coronary" could be a euphamism for "on a private jet to Argentina"...
Why is it that the ones who deserve the most punishment for what they've done always conveniently die or vanish before they can be punished?
Resurrect him, I don't care how, then punish him most painfully, then re-kill him, as far as I'm concerned.
Oh, and let's parade photos of his dead body through the streets just like we did with that dead terrorist a few months ago.
Prove he's dead.
i am a soviet space shuttle
Does this remove the Lay family fortune (if any) from any criminal penalties?
So, now everybody here who keeps saying "Ken Lay did blah blah blah and never faced any jail time" is actually right.
I hope BSD isn't really dying...
Do you have ESP?
Construction has begun at the Hope Memorial Cemetery to install new drainage tiles in anticipation of the 4,000+ people expected to arrive within the next week to piss on Mr. Lay's grave.
I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Ethical paragon Kenneth Lay was found dead in his Colorado home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to business culture. Truly an American icon.
Get your own free personal location tracker
Dear God, for the sake of humanity, please take the rest of those corrupt Republican potato chips!
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
As others have said, it is possible he's not dead, and that this is simply a ruse to prevent prosecution.
I'll also believe the cause of Lay's death after we hear it from a coroner or a physician rather than his attorney or his priest.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Enron filed for bankruptcy in December 2001 after investigators found it had used partnerships to conceal more than $1 billion in debt and inflate profits
... not 5 years later.
I honestly woulda thought he woulda died of a heart attack back in 2001 when they filed for bankruptcy
God opted for the death penalty.
Interesting that any life insurance he held will still go to any named beneficiaries and cannot be tapped to help settle for any judgments/judgements against him.
Actually, everyone who decided that Enron and a handful of others could be extrapolated to the entire US economy are the ones to thank for our having to live with Sarbanes-Oxley.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Sure, nobody just keels over and dies from a heart attack. That never happens. And anybody who talks about "stress factors" like being pilloried in front of millions of people or facing spending the rest of his life in prison, is just spreading misinformation. And if you mention the fact that he was in his 60s, you've just got your head up your ass.
If he faked his death, what kind of new charges would he be looking at? Fraud and conspiracy? Already pretty full on those...
I doubt it's faked.
I doubt it was the government, because they want to see him punished as a way of showing that they're "tackling" the problem.
I doubt it was cholesterol either... as he would have been on any medication around to stop that.
My bet is that facing a very probable "rest of your life in real actual PMITA prison" (A 20 year sentence would ahve effectively been life for a man of his age) the stress got him.
At least he saved us the tax dollars it would have cost to shelter and feed him.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
Really, Lay wasn't the architect, he just covered it up until he could figure out how to get away from the mess without it sinking him. If you want to know more about who really created the fiasco, watch Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and see. Also see how the present administration was complicit in the California Energy Crisis.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Al Capone
If it was possible for us to ask him a question right now (I am an atheist and don't believe in souls or god or anything,) would he have done it the same way again given a chance, I wonder what his answer would have been. Life taught me however, that no matter how much regret people feel because of something that, given a chance they would have done a better job at concealing the evidence but they most likely would have still done the same thing.
Any thoughts?
You can't handle the truth.
God for the win!!!
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
Is he REALLY dead?
Most of his cash "vanished" shortly before his arrest, and his assets were never frozen.
When Lay collapsed, his personal assistant called Lay's personal doctor, not an ambulance. It was Lay's personal physician who pronounced Lay dead.
Lay's will, revised just a couple of months ago, calls for his cremation, and his widow was out of the country when he died. She's reportedly having medical complications from "The shock of her belove husband's sudden death." As a result, she's not expected to return to the states for the funeral.
Details on who signed the death certificate are fuzzy, but there are no plans for an autopsy. He's scheduled for cremation tomorrow morning.
Any bets there's no actual body in the casket, or if there is, it's not Ken Lay's?
This morning the biggest corporate criminal in modern history, Kenneth Lay, died of a massive coronary...
/duck
You just watch... I'll bet he is lying yet once again.
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
The greatest genocidal doctor in history, Joseph Mengele, also died peacefully without paying his debts.
I do believe though that their afterlives are anything but peaceful.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Seriously, some days I just want to punch all the cryptoloons in the balls. And if they don't have balls, I'll graft donor balls onto them and punch those.
Damn, I need more vacation.
.. he saved the state some $ now that they don't have to warehouse him in jail.
I wonder how much that was...
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
So this is "news for nerds, stuff that matters"? The only thing Ken Lay had to contribute was a good joke about California during the blackouts.
Q: What's the difference between the Titantic and California?
A: The Titantic lights were still on.
Sometimes, it's the rags-to-riches types who go to these extremes, because they're deluded by their own success into believing that they can pull off just about anything, and even in their darkest hour, they've got a plan for wriggling out and turning things around. I'm sure at some point in this whole saga, Lay and Skilling and the rest had a few moments of trepidation when they were crossing the legal line, but a few rationalizations later, they're off and running and all that is in the rearview mirror.
That hard-working, affable manner doesn't excuse their crimes in the least. Let 'em put those skills to work in federal, PMITA prison.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
How about "life savings"?
I would rather he go through due punishment, but I guess God decided he was too evil and killed him off ahead of time.
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
Mod Parent up; that was hysterical!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Did he take out a few short-term personal loans to increase the irony?
-- If you're posting to be funny, and your sig is funnier . . . .
OK, everybody knows they can do anything better than anyone else, and there is no real point to following rules created by others. But, in order to end the fighting and constant bickering, we put up with these little annoyances called rules, regulations, and laws. Given that they are silly and pointless, what Other Reasons could there be to not increase corporate financial accountability?
Seems to me anything that puts the CEO, COO, CFO and every other cheif of a company right in the line of fire for criminal and civil liability is a good thing. The Board Officers should be there too of course. To me, the CEO and Chairman are like the Captain of a ship or a Genereal on the battlefield. You Are in Charge and You Are Responsible. If you say the company is in XYZ condition, it damn well ought to be and if we can prove you lied about it, you go to prison. Youd don't get to hide by saying, "the underlings run the company and I don't have a clue". Nothing should be hidden from "conventional interpretation" by some warped usage of accounting and bookkeeping practices. If you want to create a high risk, closed box operation, there are legal ways to do that without hiding it from your investors.
Sunlight and visibility in all the operations should be normal operating procedure, not an inconvienience to be endured.
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
I hope they bury him face down... so he sees where the f**k he's going.
FTA:
"He lost a fortune, his family lost a fortune."
I haven't followed this very closely at all, but I seem to recall that most of these guys kept at least one, if not two or more, very nice houses, worth in the millions. It's not the billions they were worth on paper, but c'mon, that's not losing the entire fortune, especially when the "billions" were an illusion.
It really bothers me that most of the threads in this story are either "we should let employees piss on his corpse" or "he's not dead!". Assuming that he is in fact dead, aren't we forgetting something? Irrespective of what he presided over and did, he was a human being. He doubtless had people who cared about him, who will be mourning his death. As a human, no matter what sins he committed in life, we should show some respect - if nothing else for the sake of his family and loved ones.
Lead developer, http://wisptools.net
According to MSFTextrememakover, the total shareholder value lost at Tyco, Lucent, Worldcom, and Enron combined was $192 billion, but since 1999 the total shareholder value lost for Microsoft alone is $360 billion. Take that for what you will.
A 64 year old man after years of extremely stresssful situation has a heart attack.
The time to 'turnover' anyone passed years ago.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Isn't "coronary" an adjective? You can't die of an adjective.
At the end of the dotcom bubble I was working in downtown San Francisco. We used to have rolling blackouts and everybody would leave the building for a couple hours and enjoy themselves. Anyways, the servers weren't running and nobody was making money (except for the CEOs, they always make money.)
I asked my brother, an electrician at a Bay Area biotech, what the hell was going on and he didn't know.
It turns out that this fucking company Enron was turning off power-plants willy-nilly so they could profit off the spike in energy consumption somehow. So, while hospitals and grandma Millie are sitting in the dark these jackasses in Texas are laughing their asses off all the way to the bank.
It also turns out that our pussy governor could have sent the National Guard to ONE fucking powerplant and took it over. When the assholes from Enron call to take it offline they would pick up the phone: "could you turn the power off so we can spike the grid and make a lot of money?" "Uhhhh, this is Col. Soandso of the California National Guard. Who's this?" "Nevermind..." hangup. (Enron stops shenanigans.)
Oh well, Ken Lay, may you rot in the eighth circle of Dante's Hell: reserved for those guilty of deliberate fraudulent evil.
Death is never funny... ... except when it is.
In Soviet Russia these Soviet Russia jokes aren't considered the least bit amusing...
Enron is very relevant to the huge amount of auditing infrastructure that so many IT grunts were required to add to their corporate systems in the past few years.
Does anyone know how this affects his families liability concerning the Enron fraud? I haven't really followed the story very closely, mostly reading only the headlines, but I seem to remember he has already paid a lot of fines? Or maybe he just lost so much money due to the stock crash. In any case, does anyone know if the inheritors of his estate are now liable to any damages he might have done to the shareholders or employees of Enron? And can the courts take fines out of his estate before his inheritors (his wife, I guess?) take it?
"He was pushed... They "Cliff Baxter'd" Kenny. You know Cliff, he's the guy who committed suicide with the wildly innacurate and seldom lethal shot cartridges, that also make it forensically challenging to plot ballistic trajectory.
Kenny-boy suggested the VP role for Cheney to the Shrub. He was part of the "energy taskforce" that they are so desparate to keep under wraps. Like Dr. Kelly... Like... The list is big and convenient.
Or did his poor heart break, because it was too good for this world? I don't think so!
Another crony about to sing like a Canary to cop a plea...
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Ken Lay was the CEO of a corporation that defrauded its employees and investors. He was Chiefly responsible for all Executive decisions. If he did not know what was going on in his own company under his watch, than he still defrauded the investors by drawing a salary and stock options while clearly being incompetent at his job.
It's justice for a man to die for theft and fraud?
I realize he stold millions of dollars. I realize that he cost the jobs of thousands of people. I realize he ruined many innocent people's lives. It's pretty obvious that this guy was a scum ball.
But how does that justify calling his death "justice"? Would it be justice if he was killed by the government or one of his bilked former employees?
Take away his money, his reputation, and his freedom... but don't call his death justice.
"This morning the biggest corporate criminal in modern history, Kenneth Lay, died of a massive coronary before he could receive his sentence."
Now THAT is what I call a karma mod!
Everyone's missed by someone. He achieved something very few people do, though.. people will be talking about him for generations. For better or worse, he's a part of history now.
What was a convicted felon, awaiting sentencing, doing on vacation? His ass should have been in jail.
My other sig is extremely clever...
Posterity will ne'er survey
A nobler grave than this:
Here lie the bones of Kenneth Lay:
Stop, traveller, and piss.
The biggest corporate criminal in modern history hasn't been caught yet.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
I heard on the radio leaked info from the coroner that he had Viagra in his system. Makes sense; going away to prison for what amounts to a life sentence and all.
On another note, what's with most press accounts characterizing his death is a tragedy?
...as if the black heart of one of the Empire has just ceased to exist.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
So didn't I just see this on a Dead Zone episode? Snake venom, heart attack, problem solved?
Look: faced with a life-long jail sentence and plunging my family into poverty or winking out prematurely and letting them collect my fat-ass life insurance...which would I choose? Hrm.
The last greedy, selfish thing the man ever did was perhaps the most selfless, at least to his family. I hope somebody is running tox screenings for exotic substances...Kevorkian meets Capitalism.
Scott
"Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid."
Hmmmm....
Ken Lay (Cheny - Energy Adivisory Board - Heart Attack)
Vince Foster (Clinton - Whitewater involvement - Suicide)
William Casey (Reagan - Iran Contra - Brain Tumor)
For those not paying attention, Ken Lay was already found guilty, and therefore already prosecuted. He was awaiting sentencing when this happened.
This has nothing to do with nerd's news. This place ........
... Standards and Practices !
I should know better.
PenGun
Do What Now ???
To me, the CEO and Chairman are like the Captain of a ship or a Genereal on the battlefield.
So you're saying that Lay died from some kind of genereal disease?
No, I say it was FOXDIE. Now, will this be marked trolling or off-topic?
Y helo thar
After seeing "The Smartest Guys in the Room" and learning about how he screwed honest people out of their life-long savings, this SOB should be rotting in a jail cell. One worker in the movie had $300,000 in company stock (his entire life savings) in his 401k - and had to cash it in for $1200. The guy was in his late 50's. I'm just sad nobody choked him like a bitch before he died. A heart attack was just too easy for this scumbag.
they killed Kenny!
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Dishonor will not trouble me, once I am dead. -- Euripides
OK, safe to say that most Americans are probably not shedding a tear for this guy. Had nothing, made himself rich through hard work, then let it go to his head and couldn't face failure, so he bilked others out of billions. We're all a little poorer thanks to his machinations.
OTOH, he was human -- proud, flawed, and subject to the passions of the animal. He was probably not the anti-Christ, didn't kill people, chop them up, and keep them in his freezer for future barbecues, nor order the death of millions because he thought they led to the downfall of his nation in the previous war. Villify him if you wish, call him the criminal he was, but now his impact is for history to decide.
And BTW, Skilling is still here to take the rap.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
It seems obvious from all the anti-Lay comments on slashdot that the average reader really hasn't read enough about the Enron trial to understand that Lay really wasn't the evil that our government said he was.
The Enron fiasco occurred 100% due to over-regulation of many different markets, including the wholesale energy business, the retail energy business, the accounting regulations on larger corporations and the myriad of acceptable loopholes that existed in the tax law up until they fell. Enron was supported by many politicians because many politicians had their hands in that big pie of money Enron would make for them.
What laws were broken by Lay? "Conspiracy to commit securities fraud and wire fraud." What does that mean exactly? It means that they didn't jump through the regulation hoops the way that your government mandated they do. As a business owner myself, I can tell you that I will NEVER want to run a big business (which helps the economy at every level) because of the government's rules that change on a whim.
Securities fraud cases are always "derivative" crimes, meaning they are made up crimes -- there were no actual victims who were harmed physically from these actions. Much of the blame for Enron's collapse should be pointed to Alan Greenspan who created money out of thin air with his decade of inflationary monetary policy. This money that was easily created was just as easily invested in thousands of publicly traded companies -- this investment caused stock prices to go up and allowed many companies to spend like no tomorrow. As more money was created by Greenspan, more people wanted a piece of the stock market pie -- fraudulent as it is.
I'm not defending the late Lay, but I don't think he did much more than piss off a bunch of politicians who lost their money as well. We should be stringing Greenspan up on a pole for all to see, but instead he makes $150,000 per speech defending his terrible money supply fraud.
What happened to Lay happened to Martha Stewart as well. Stocks lost value, the general idiotic public wanted some throats to be cut, so throats were cut. Nothing illegal happened, the law is too complicated for anyone to really gauge legal from illegal. They just wanted meat, and they got it.
Of course in my mind anyone who runs a State-subsidized corporation deserves to go down with the ship, but Lay was no different than any number of politicians many slashdotters love and admire. They're all crooks in terms of free market theory, and that is what matters most to me.
Oh yes, that horrible Democratic corruption which stains dresses, makes cigars smell like fish, and relieves the president's pent up tension after working all night to pass a budget after the god-fearing Republicans shut down the government. I forgot to mention that. Thanks for reminding me.
I Miss Monica - Ode to an intern.
<sarcasm>I'm glad to know you Republican ass-holes are still fighting the good fight against consentual blow-jobs. Blow jobs kill a lot more people than senseless wars, and they cost taxpayers much more than $293,646,760,794. I'm glad you have your priorities straight, and that you aren't hipocrits for hold double standards.</sarcasm>
-Don
PS: <truth>Ann Coulter is a MAN, baby! And if you want to fuck her, then you're gay!<truth>
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
and better luck next time.
Hmmmmmm...... What fortune does this portend.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
...you Bastards!
Come on, tell me what Lay did that was wrong. Not a single person here can actually prove that he committed any actual crimes against anyone else. Does anyone know how convoluted the energy regulations and restrictions in the country (and in all 50 states) has become? It's a mess. Lay is guilty of one thing -- running a government subsidized business. He isn't guilty of defrauded anyone because that is the norm with any government-sponsored business.
The only reason Lay got strung up is because politicians lost their money, too. Blame Greenspan for that entire mess, not Lay. Blame your Congressman who definitely voted for the regulations that were in place (and are today). Sarbanes-Oxley is WORSE than the problems that existed before it -- and those problems were created because of previous regulations on businesses and accounting practices. There is no rule of law, now, not that it was that strong before.
I'm sorry, I can't be anything but damn happy about this. My only disappointment is that he didn't actually serve some time behind bars before dying. He and his cronies were pure scum, worse than any blue-collar criminal by far. A street thug ends up ruining a few people's lives -- these manipulative assholes ruined thousands of people's lives as they sat in their comfy boardrooms and made their schemes.
It's a strange world -- let's keep it that way
I am told that Sen. Joe McCarthy (who easily wrecked as many lives as Lay) couldn't understand why anyone would be unhappy with him. I'm not saying he was a psychopath ... well maybe.
n t/personality/psychopathy_checklist.html
Just in case, here's a link to the psychopathy checklist:
http://www.swin.edu.au/victims/resources/assessme
I hope that god damn crook busts hell wide open.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
I am not sure if this has already been said on this thread, but I am already getting hints that the conspiricy freaks are saying he isn't really dead. He just faked his death so he could escape prison.
Breakfast served all day!
Ted Bundy was polite and charming too.
Kenneth Lay was obviously not a great humanitarian but comparing him to one of the most notorious serial killers in history is a bit much. He lied, okay? He lied. That's what his crime was. I grow a bit weary of hearing ex-Enron employees wail about how their life-savings are gone thanks to Lay. These poor people need to accept a bit of responsibility for their mess. You never invest all your money in a single company. Diversification is simple Financial Planning 101. Everyone know this. The reason why these people ignored this bedrock of finance is because Enron's stock once did quite well. They figured they'd beat the market, beat the Jones, beat everyone and place their entire bet on the winning horse. Then they could brag to their neighbors about what a financial genius they were. Simply put: these people who were ruined by the Enron scandal got greedy.
Kenneth Lay lied. He didn't destroy the livelihood of scores of people; they did that to themselves. And please spare me the responses about how I'm being cold-hearted. I feel for these people. Losing everything should never happen to anyone. But placing all the blame on one man and comparing him to Ted Bundy sickens me. It's just another example of our victimization culture. No one wants to admit it to themselves that they ruined their lives. They want to believe that some con-man forced them into something and that they had no choice.
GMD
watch this
Bullshit! He's out of this country! Plain and simple.......
Fat lot of good it did him to accumulate all that money.... especially on the backs of other people..... Hope there's a special place in Hell for people like him .....or he comes back as a if you believe in that sort of thing (reincarnation)
...and that they[work collegues] felt devoted to him.
...needed when ones business growth is to progress beyond stage three.
These devottees are otherwise known as faithfull lieutenants.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
Damn fine parody, my friend!
I work in security, by the way, and this chap increased my earnings potential by a factor of five. Ten years ago I was crushing my soul writing apps in VB and Access v2. Now I have a Linux laptop and free reign to break into any internal systems I fancy taking a crack at (not to mention regular pentests of suppliers and partners. It's all good :)
Ahhh, c'mon people...he faked his death to avoid prison time. He's probably sun bathing in Venezuela by now. ;-)
What's Karma is when you have everything you worked your entire life to build destroyed before your eyes because you got greedy and stole a lot of people's money. Which was in the process when he died. I suspect that a large portion of the fortune he's leaving behind will go to the US Government instead of his surviving family.
Ken Lay fucked up the lives of a lot of people. Thousands of Enron ex-employees will not be able to retire thanks to his actions. I doubt those people will feel vindicated by his death. I suspect that there will be some very bitter Wal-mart greeters in the next 20 years. Even his heirs won't be on solid ground given the controversy over his fortune. I'd suggest striking his name from the history books except that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
... The corpse defecates on YOU!
Sunlight and visibility = good.
Sarbanes-Oxley = bad.
Fraud = already illegal.
Accounting practices = different for every company, every state, every nation.
Dog is my co-pilot.
I think I'll wait to see if netcraft can confirm this. I'm still a little gunshy from the whole *BSD thing.
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/
-Tom
Who do you have to bribe in a podunk little town full of people you've known for a long time to fake your death? The guys at the morgue? The local police? Not hard for a guy with that much money and that much motive.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I can't wait to hear Bush's comments on Lay's passing.
-=- Many seek good nights and lose good days.
My compliments!
-=- Many seek good nights and lose good days.
Don't you all think that this is just a little too convenient. The man was facing possibly life in prison, which for a white collar crime is a huge sentence which he justly deserves, but he all of a sudden dies. Can you all say suicide? I knew that you could. Or wait maybe he is still alive and we will start having Ken Lay sitings at trailer-parks and Walmarts across America?
He dies before sentencing, Now we have no yardstick for similar crooks in the future, no order of restitution to be paid. Inheritance gets whatever he had left + life insurance benefits (which I bet is a pretty good chunk of any state budget)
A Republican friend of mine mockingly said "How dare he die before we get a chance to punish him." What he say in jest, I say in earnest.
Personally, I would have liked to see him live a long, long, long life breaking rocks in the hot sun. Since he probably would have ended up at Club Fed, I hope it hurt a tenth as much as losing your retirement and life savings overnight.
As an Atheist, I get no satisfaction from him keeling over. I literally feel robbed, and I had no money in their company. The people who did probably feel robbed all over again.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
...vacationing in Aspen
I understand this is news and should be reported, but why on /.? As the place for "news for nerds", where is the nerd factor?
So a rich guy who did some bad things died because he ate too many Big Macs (or the Ruth's Chris version)...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/US/01/25/enron.suicid e/n ews/main505845.shtml
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/04/10/evening
Hahaha! You can't stop the conspiracy theory!! Poor old Vice Chairman Clifford Baxter had integrity and didn't like the what went down at Enron.. guess it got to him back in 2002.. and he killed himself. Just before investigators could speak with him.
Hehehehehee!!
P.S. I'm convinced there's a conspiracy surround why no one had mentioned this yet..
Guy makes a ton of money...
Ruins people's lives...
And now he dies a martyr, and has 72 virgins waiting for him!
All that evil built up in his bones and then suddenly, he had to reboot.
Smile.
Just minutes before Lays heartattack, Prez Bush called him up and stated that he wouldn't be able to pardon him in 2008. His spot was taken by Saddam.
Can I bum a sig?
I'm reasonably confident that we would not have needed to release anyone from jail to put Ken Lay in jail while he awaited sentencing. If we would have to let someone out, I'm sure we could find a nonviolent person who was arrested for possesion of marijuana. It sounds like your friend's husband needs to be in jail, but that has nothing to do with this.
My other sig is extremely clever...
Don't you need a heart to have a heart attack?
After what he and his cronies did I didn't think they had a whole one between them.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
What about Mr. Bill?
... that Ken Lay isn't going to be Bubba's prison bitch for the next decade.
Is he REALLY dead?
Most of his cash "vanished" shortly before his arrest, and his assets were never frozen.
When Lay collapsed, his personal assistant called Lay's personal doctor, not an ambulance. It was Lay's personal physician who pronounced Lay dead.
Lay's will, revised just a couple of months ago, calls for his cremation, and his widow was out of the country when he died. She's reportedly having medical complications from "The shock of her belove husband's sudden death." As a result, she's not expected to return to the states for the funeral.
Details on who signed the death certificate are fuzzy, but there are no plans for an autopsy. He's scheduled for cremation tomorrow morning.
Any bets there's no actual body in the casket, or if there is, it's not Ken Lay's?
Billions are now being spent nationwide by American CEOs on similar contingency plans for faking one's own death and moving vast financial resources to a safe location out of the country.
Ken Lay has become quite a roll model for Corporate CEOs all over the country. He made a vast fortune, and despite being caught, manged to keep a large number of his cohorts from facing any real repercussions while escaping with his own fortune largely intact.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
PMITA = Pound Me In The Ass (prison)
In other words, the kind of prison where you're likely going to end up real "intimate" with some guy named "Avocado," not the typical country-club style prison that most of the rich and famous get to go to.
Just off the top of my head, It seems to me that you actually have guys named Sarbanes and Oxely to thank for having to live with Sarbanes-Oxely.
In regards to his appeal, he was heard saying, "If I'm lying, I'm dieing." And then, with a heavy heart... well, y'know the story.
I'm like a superhero, but with no powers or motivation.
I hope any potentially larcenous executives out there realize that the penalty for being caught, shamed, and convicted of being a criminal can be death when you are Ken's age (even down into the 50's really).
Ken could have avoided this fate. If he had managed enron well or just got the hell out of dodge if he couldn't, he would probably be alive and very happy today.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I hate to sound like a prick...But maybe the thought of prison sex put him over the edge. After seing Enron:The smartest men in the room; I can't feel sorry for his passing. He has caused many people grief. Karma, it seems, always has the last say.
The fortune(8) footer that appeared at the end of the comments section seems all too fitting: "Dishonor will not trouble me, once I am dead. -- Euripides"
If you don't know what you're doing, do it neatly.
When I recently visited the Houston Museum of Natural Science (for the Body Worlds travelling exhibit -- cool!), I noticed that their Hall of the Americas included Ken and Linda Lay as contributors. You don't see it on the website -- in fact, Google doesn't show any instances of his name on the hmns.org site at all -- but up at the Americas exhibit, there's a big, glowing sign proclaiming the Lay family's generosity.
I wondered at the time whether they just hadn't gotten around to applying the duct tape, like they did at Enron Field, since renamed to something more wholesome. But now that we* can look back and say "Aw, poor schmuck", maybe the HMNS and the other museums that benefitted from Lay's largesse can put the duct tape away for good.
* "we": For values of "we" that don't include Enron shareholders as of late 2001.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
what Other Reasons could there be to not increase corporate financial accountability?
The down-side to Sarbox is that it massively increases accouting burden and raises the bar in terms of funds and overhead required for any small company to go public. This both reduces the benefits of going public and limits the IPO opportunity to larger, better funded corporations, at the expense of many more interesting younger companies. It puts the opportunity further out of reach of smaller entreprenuers.
Most venture investors and entreprenuers feel that Sarbox goes too far. You seem to be speaking strictly from the perspective of a (rather uninformed) public shareholder, and frankly you seem to lack the necessary insight into the costs of Sarbox compliance to form a balanced viewpoint. Increasing penalties for (and actually enforcing) SEC rules would have gone a long way without having to add new requirements.
* We had to change from domain per plant to one common domain.
* Passwords have very strict rules. (90 days, complex, 60 days if superuser)
* Lots of training.
* Tons more paperwork for accouting.
* Very strict rules about where you ship for a customer.
* all the cost is pasted onto the customer.
* etc., etc., etc.
Never trust a man wearing a coat and tie!
You remember the burly brawl from Matrix Reloaded? The scene where Neo flies off and all the agent Smiths are just kinda standing around looking generally disappointed and perplexed?
Welcome to the world of the Ken Lay prosecution team.
- For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
It's the cost of compliance that is so bad. If you are a huge company, say Exxon, with its $10 Billion quarterly profit, then you can afford to pay for the accountants, lawyers, IT auditors, and others needed to assure compliance. I would guess that Exxon pays $10M/quarter for this, about $0.1% of their profits. But if you are a software company with $25M in annual revenue and maybe $2M in annual profit before taxes, with hopes of going public, then the cost of SarbOx compliance makes it nearly impossible to do so. It's hard to spend less than $500K annually and satisfy the SarbOx requirements. For a small company, this amounts to at least 25% of earnings, which reduces the likely value of their stock, since investors tend to focus on price/earnings ratios. I was told that SarbOx was an important reason why JBoss decided to be acquired rather than try to go public on their own.
It's now occupied by Kenneth Lay.
-=- Many seek good nights and lose good days.
God called. He wants to know where his pension is.
It's all Krista's Fault.
because they're deluded by their own success into believing that they can pull off just about anything, and even in their darkest hour, they've got a plan for wriggling out and turning things around
You mean like faking your own death? And enjoying the rest of your life on an island in Fiji with over 100 million in secret bank accounts?
Seriously, its what I'd do if I was him.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
The trouble is that Sarbanes-Oxley puts restrictions on law abiding citizens never implicated in crimes.
I mean, we all want to stop rape, right? How about we make a law requiring you to provide your DNA to a government database so they can catch rapists. After all, if you are not a rapist, what do you have to worry about?
We all want to stop illegal drugs from harming people. How about we have random drug testing for all citizens. The police will select random names from a voting database or DMV records or something, and give them all drug tests. If you test postive, you go to jail. If you don't take the test, you go to jail. Sound reasonable?
We all want to stop terrorism. How about requiring that police search every residence once a month. Nothing harmfull with that, you have nothing to worry about if you are not a terrorist, right?
While there is nothing wrong with creating laws to punish people guilty of theft and fraud, there are big problems with creating a system where everyone must prove their innocence on a regular basis or be considered guilty. Especially, like in the Sarbanes-Oxley, it is a series of vauge rules that are very difficult to comply with and can be arbitrarily enforced. This is more fodder for the government to go after it's critics, or to demand political donations as protection money for non-enforcement, or to help a company with political connections by going after it's competitor, and the fixed costs of compliance help keep smaller buisnesses with competing with large corporations. It is not going to stop this kind of corporate crime, it is just another tool for the government to aid certain corporate criminals, and harrass other people they don't like.
At least! We are finaly seeing some progress on the war of terrorism.
Citation here
Due to his untimely demise, an important point is that he was never given the opportunity to exhaust his appeals options (which would have begun after his sentencing in September), and thus, the conviction will be abated. The unfortunate thing is that he died prior to the conclusion of this process, and it's terrible that his estate probably won't suffer monetary consequences--at least from criminal proceedings--because of this, but I'd rather live in a country where that's the case than the alternative, in which there is no appeals process.
--- What
Its a trick ..... Get an AXE!
I find it ironic that the crook dies, and this is the current quote at the bottom of /. :::
Dishonor will not trouble me, once I am dead. -- Euripides
(I wonder if this will be modded Insigthful, or Interesting... god forbid it's Funny)
I told u I was hardcore.
Oh my God! You're so right.
/sarcasm
Corrupt Republicans aren't a problem, because you know, the Democrats we elect to replace them might also be corrupt. So we should just look the other way and mind our own business.
Then again, there are us reasonable sorts who upon seeing corruption vote the bums out, regardless of party.
It's sarcasm. As in "I could care less.... if I really, really tried".
PUBLIC CORPORATIONS ARE NOT PEOPLE!!!!11!!!!
Any metaphor drawn from that cloth is fundamentally flawed.
The "innocence" you say must be proved is, in reality, reports on how much money the corporation has/owes/and is owed. As these numbers HUGELY influence how real people invest their own money, it is requisite for our entire system of finance that these numbers be accurate and trusted.
SOX might be a bit onerous, but that's only because things had become so lax....and Lay was the perfect example of how they were so lax that CEO's could try and argue in court they had no idea how much the company has/owes/and is owed.
I'll not touch your liberaltarian ranting that follows...I hear they're infectious.
+&x
Fer Chrissakes, can anyone here tell me whether or not Generalissimo Franco is still dead?
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
Duhhh. Isn't that what all laws and regulations do? It's basically saying, "We think that you're a law-abiding citizen, but we don't want you to do X. In fact, we don't want you to do X so much that, if you do X, here's what we're going to do to you."
Everybody is law-abiding until they break the law. And, after they pay their debt to society, they're law abiding again (unless they break the law again).
Or do you want anarchy?
That is all.
And nothing in the "convoluted the energy regulations and restrictions" in the country requires the construction of hundreds of off-balance sheet offshore subsidiaries to hide debt in. If you want to argue whether Ken Lay was ignorant of the accounting fraud that is represented by those subsidiaries, I guess despite the guilty verdict you might have a reasonable argument. But your claim seems to suggest that the real problem with Enron was energy regulations, and it's entirely clear that Enron did in fact commit securities fraud on an industrial scale.
I'm a nature photographer.
For a man who caused a LOT of problems for a lot of people, and that he had much information on others who are under then gun, is it entirely possible his death is not a coincidence? There have been too many coincidences in the past with scandals for this to be accepted as a natural death. Powerful and rich people gained before the downfall of Enron (like Rockefeller), and now the chief witness is dead. Hmmmm.
> For a small company, this amounts to at least 25% of earnings,
Exactly! The Democrats whole-heartedly supported Sarbanes-Oxley just for that reason. It has put companies out of business, and it has cost a lot of jobs. It's one of the worst anti-business laws passed in the past 50 years.
According to Financial Executives International (FEI), small companies ($50B yearly). SOX compliance is extremely expensive especially for smaller public companies. At my last employer the SOX audit took almost 5,000 hours at over $200/hour. We were a private company planning to go public so the SEC recommended the audit despite it not being legally required. That was over a million thrown away for no purpose.
This ridiculous SOX clause put almost 200 people out of work in the last company I worked for:
> Ban on most personal loans to any executive officer or director
There's nothing wrong with loans if properly supervised. We had a Catch-22 in that our entire management team moved to the area in early 2002 with sign-on bonuses in the form of no interest loans to help pay for their moves and downpayments on new homes. In order to go public we would have had to have every one of them pay back 100% of the loans. Since most of them could not afford to do so, we had to either fire them (and then they probably would have never paid the loan!) or not go public. We choose the second option. Since the entire business plan was based upon going public as we knew would probably happen, we ran out of money.
The sad thing is the affect we had on the small town we were in. The median houshold income in this city is $37,400, but we were paying an average of over $58k to those 200 people put out of work by SOX. When you included wives and children, that was almost 700 people that lost their income in a town of about 11,000. It also left the nicest office building in the city about 75% empty, and that space is still sitting unused.
The only thing that survived was a small part of the company that executes a couple of small, but profitable, contracts.
Have a quick Google for Ernest Saunders and the Guiness fraud scandal.
Mr. Saunders was let out of prison early because he was suffering from Alzheimers. He miraculously recovered once he was free.
No way he was a monster. he believed the same hype we all did for a while. remember, there was a time when being considered profitable was just as good as being profitable.
Enron was a great company. They really did rule the world for a while. I know. I live in Houston, and Enron were everywhere and in everything. They made a lot of stupid mistakes, but had a lot of profitable businesses. Without that stupid fucking accounting system and lazy analysts, Enron might still be around today ruling the world.
I think 5 or 10 years from now, after SOX is repealed and replaced with something a little less insane, we will look back and wonder how we managed to do business with all these restrictions. It is so costly to follow SOX, the only people making money in America these days are the consultants and auditors.
"Let him rot in prison," is usually just a figure of speech, but in this case...
The closer you are to the code, the happier you are. - Ancient Geek Proverb
Duhhh. Isn't that what all laws and regulations do? It's basically saying, "We think that you're a law-abiding citizen, but we don't want you to do X. In fact, we don't want you to do X so much that, if you do X, here's what we're going to do to you."
It is one thing to say "you can't do this, or you will be punished", but another thing to say "even if you are innocent, you must prove that you are innocent using the means we specify, otherwise you will be punished as if you are guilty".
You are ignoring the questions I asked. The government wants to stop rape. It demands all citizens must give a DNA sample to a government database. If you don't give a sample, you will be assumed to be guilty of rape (after all, why would you have a problem giving a DNA sample if you are not a rapist). Would you have a problem with a law like that? Well, SOX is the same thing, except the way you prove your innocence under SOX is a convoluted system that only lawyers and accountants that specialize in such things kinda understand.
Or do you want anarchy?
In our society that is rapidly becoming totalitarian, nearly everything that isn't totalitarian will appear anarchist by contrast.
When an employee asked during a company meeting whether having most of his (her?) savings in Enron was a smart thing to do, the management spokewoman could have advised diversification. Instead she made it clear that Enron was where their money should be, all the while making a big joke about it.
I accept your point that employees take responsibility for their actions. They should have no more legal claims than other investors for the fall of Enron stock.
But by encouraging employees to stay undiversified, Enron management compounded their criminal culpability.
I say we resurrect him.
Then we stomp him.
Then we tattoo him.
Then we hang him.
Then we kill him.
Who, eulogizes for the, english language, which is so, often, abused with the random, placement of, commas?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation
"A corporation is a legal person which, while being composed of natural persons, exists completely separately from them. This separation gives the corporation unique powers which other legal entities lack. The extent and scope of its status and capacity is determined by the law of the place of incorporation."
I'm not necessarily agreeing or disagreeing with your views on SOX. I am just noting that a Corporation is a legal person.
Currently you are modded Flamebait, yet you are the one who accurately called the situation. Go figure!
damaged by dogma
After moving to a better hospital, his condition was upgraded to "alive".
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
I can not even imagine what section this should be listed under?
The man is dead. Odds are his family loved him and his friends will miss. What I don't understand is what value any of these comments on Slashdot have?
What good is this mans death? Will it get anyone their money back? Will it prevent him from doing it again? Will it cause anything but pain too his family?
The man took money through bad accounting practices. He didn't murder anyone.
Maybe people more people should adopt the motto, "Do nothing that doesn't help?"
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
PUBLIC CORPORATIONS ARE NOT PEOPLE!!!!11!!!!
No, but people go to jail if they don't comply with SOX. People ARE people. And people are going to be sent to jail, not because they lied about how much money their company mankes, but because they can't prove that they didn't lie about how much money their company makes.
People should NEVER, EVER, EVER, have to prove their innocence! That is not the way laws are supposed to work! Innocent until proven guilty is supposed to be how the law works, even for people who work for comporations!
I'll not touch your liberaltarian ranting that follows...I hear they're infectious.
You won't touch my "libertarian ranting" because you know it is true, and there is no arguement you can make. Overly complicated and overly vauge regulation, which is open to widely different interpretations, leads to a situation where the law can be used to harrass people for political reasons. And trust me, it is not going to be the "Big Evil Corporations" who are going to be the ones stung. You are living in a country where the Patriot Act is being used as a tool to go after local drug dealers, and the RICO act is being used to convict people in absentia for running online casinos IN COUNTRIES WHERE IT IS PERFECTLY LEGAL! You know damn well that the government is going to have a field day with this, and lots of people are going to go to jail on some SOX technicality after they speak out against the president, or donate a lot of money to the losing candidate in an election, or when the president decides to reward a friends company by taking out the competition (ever hear of Halburton?).
I love a good conspiracy theory so how about this, Ken Lay whacked because he was going to talk about Cheneys "energy meetings" to get a reduced sentence.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
..... RIH
..yah and the police screwed up a lot of the crime scene.
My point, basically, is that it's certainly much better than some freak looking at kiddy porn.
Remember this? If A=B and B=C, then A=C
some freak looking at kiddy porn = Some kiddy pornographer making $
Some kiddy pornographer making $ = Some kid being abused
Therefore: some freak looking at kiddy porn = Some kid being abused
Sorry, I smoked my last sig
And people are going to be sent to jail, not because they lied about how much money their company mankes, but because they can't prove that they didn't lie about how much money their company makes.
You show me where that has happened that didn't involve fraud and we'll talk again. In all the corporate fraud cases, there is NO QUESTION they lied about how much money their company had. The only doubt they are trying to raise is personal knowledge of how it got to be that way.
You won't touch my "libertarian ranting" because you know it is true, and there is no arguement you can make.
I know it to be true to you. It is a matter of faith to you and therefore beyond rational argument. Mix in the paranoia angle, and it's foolish to even attempt to discuss....as your expanded rant demonstrates.
+&x
People should NEVER, EVER, EVER, have to prove their innocence! That is not the way laws are supposed to work! Innocent until proven guilty is supposed to be how the law works, even for people who work for comporations!
You must be new to this planet.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
What? Me guilty? May I drop dead right here, right now if I'm guilty.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
What is type of Karma would one expect in taking joy at the death of another person? Of doing nothing but adding to the pain of that persons passing?
I agree with you comments and frankly they are among the most reasonable I have seen on this subject. Just wondering why everyone is so happy that this man that killed no one is dead since his death doesn't decrease any of the harm that he has caused?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Unfortunately, he went the easy way.
When I joined my employer in 1997, the 401k plan had a nice paragraph telling you that you shouldn't invest everything into the company stock. That you should diversify.
This is not a new concept, but then again, people still smoke, have unprotected sex, over-eat, believe in lies, etc...
Blar.
- creating a dummy company
- giving Enron money to said dummy company
- taking money back into Enron from said dummy company
- reporting both of the above as revenue
- lather, rinse, repeat to the tune of a few billion.
That doesn't sound like fraud to you? It sure does to me...Can I prove it? Of course not -- but who cares.
Did the Feds prove it? You betcha.
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
SOX was a well intended move in the wrong direction. It rewards the guilty. Let me explain. The individual lawyers and accountants as well as the big evil lawyering, accounting and consulting firms profited by finding loopholes in already complicated tax laws. SOX puts a huge burden on businesses to audit their process and paperwork. SOX has brought a tremendous amount of new work to the people who caused the problem in the first place.
The complicated tax laws that regulate business are defective. We need simpler business tax laws that are transparent by design. Simple taxes are simple to audit. The GAAP (generally accepted accouting practice) organizations are a cartel. They preserve complicated accounting schemes to further their self interest.
Nobody knows for sure who killed more than whom, but what we do know without a doubt is that Hitler, the Nazis and the Fascists all shared one common characteristic which was an emphasis on racial superiority justified with a mythical version of European history. Fascism was as much about white pride and racial superiority as Nazism was. Racism is a defining characteristic of both Fascism and Nazism.
Now, Communism, by comparison, has always been explicitly anti-racist and anti-sexist. This was true even under Stalin. That's the key difference between Fasism, Nazism and the crimes of the Soviets. Even if billions had died under Stalin, which obviously wasn't the case, that wouldn't change that fact that the Soviets and Communism was not a racist and sexist ideology.
Unfortunately, I can't say the same thing for conservative Americans.
"Most venture investors and entreprenuers feel that Sarbox goes too far. You seem to be speaking strictly from the perspective of a (rather uninformed) public shareholder, and frankly you seem to lack the necessary insight into the costs of Sarbox compliance to form a balanced viewpoint. Increasing penalties for (and actually enforcing) SEC rules would have gone a long way without having to add new requirements."
I'm going to go with "Wrong" on two counts here.
First, so what even if I am an uninformed public shareholder? Does that suddenly mean I really don't need to know, should not be informed of, or have a way to find out the internal workings of how the compnay I own a piece of is operated? Is the company intentionally structured so that only a few insiders with good personal connections can have a clue as to what is going to happen to their investment? Even if I can't tell a balance sheet from a chart of accounts or a budget, the structure and contents of the reports have to be understandable, so the underlying management philosophy can be understandable, so the intent of the managers and Board and prospects for the company can be inferred. We'd all like to think they have one, and hopefully it is in accord with our investemtn goals.
Second, If SEC enforcement had been doing its job, then maybe we wouldn't need more law. OK, maybe true, but clearly it wasn't doing its job so we did need new law and a new approach. It costs nothing to just put it out there and let people see what's up. But that wasn't happening. The backroom wizards found it more convienient to just let slip what was the legally required minimum and hold back stuff "you don't need to know". Ok, thanks for watching out for my interests. But in this case, I as shareholder am supposed to be watching over you. You don't get to decide what is the best way for me to do that. You don't get to play with my money and tell me to shut up and be happy. That is as true for the $100 investor as the $100 million investor. So now the cost of reporting and compliance goes up over what it had been in the past. That is seen as a bad thing, but since the reporting in the past was inadequate under the old regime, I have to wonder if the cost was just artificially low all along.
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
John Milton: Eddie Barzoon! Eddie Barzoon! Ha! I nursed him through two divorces, a cocaine rehab, and a pregnant receptionist. God's creature, right? God's special creature? Ha! And I've warned him, Kevin, I've warned him every step of the way. Watching him bounce around like a fucking game, like a wind-up toy! Like 250 pounds of self-serving greed on wheels! The next thousand years is right around the corner, Kevin, and Eddie Barzoon--take a good look. Because he's the poster child for the next millennium! These people, it's no mystery where they come from. You sharpen the human appetite to the point where it could split atoms with its desire, you build egos the size of cathedrals, fiberopticly connect the world to every-eager-impulse, grease even the dullest dreams with these dollar-green gold-played fantasies until every human becomes an aspiring emperor! Becomes his own God! Where can you go from there? And as for scrambling from one deal to the next, who's got his eye on the planet? As the air thickens, the water sours, even the bees honey takes on the metallic taste of radioactivity--and it just keeps coming! And it just keeps coming! Faster and faster! There's no chance to think, to prepare, it's `buy futures, sell futures' when there is no future!! We've got a runaway train, boy!! We've got a billion Eddie Barzoons all jogging into the future. Every one of them reading to fist-fuck God's ex-planet, lick their fingers clean as they reach out with their pristine cybernetic keyboards to total up their billable hours!! And then it hits home! It's a little late in the game to buy out now!! Your belly's too full, your dick is sore, your eyes are bloodshot, and you're screaming for someone to help!! But guess what? There's no one there!! You're all alone, Eddie!! [mocking] You're God's special little creature!!
Maybe it's true. Maybe God threw the dice once too often. Maybe He let us all down.
So, will Dear Leader El Presidente Bush attend the funeral?
Will Dear Leader El Presidente Bush pardon the fucker post-humously?
Sorta like the movie "Dave" in reverse...
FIXME: Add a sig here
When I read the story, the only thing I could think of is Nelson (from the Simpsons) saying his favorite... "Ha Ha!"
If he was going to fake his death to avoid punnishment, he could have at least come up with a real condition.
"Lay was found guilty of being in charge of the scheme that had many lose their live-savings" Live-savings, you say? All these years and I haven't been investing in things like plants and slave hands! Thanks Slashdot for making up new words for things that I didn't know I needed to worry about
Your management team bought houses they couldn't immediately afford (in a small town where the median income is less than $40k!) by borrowing money from the company while operating at a loss and you blame Sarbanes-Oxley for your failure?
But.. but... the Democrats took our jarbs!
You want a toe? I can get you a toe, believe me. There are ways, Dude. You don't wanna know about it, believe me. Hell, I can get you a toe by 3 o'clock this afternoon... with nail polish. These fucking amateurs...
Pity is for the living, the dead deserve a fair assememt of their lives. Key Lay and the rest of his neo-con buddies will rot in hell for their self-serving back room dealings which left millions of families with hardships they wouldn't wish on their own. I pity his widow, children, and grand-children, for the sudden loss of a family member, but not him.
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
You show me where that has happened that didn't involve fraud and we'll talk again.
y -news-issue.asp?id=2243s /healy305.htm
SOX is too new for there to be a big long history about it. But let me refer you to a book that will list more examples (all properly researched) than I could ever hope to produce from a quick google search on people convicted on similiar laws.
I am giving you links to reviews of the book from two clearly non-libertarian more scholarly sources, just so you don't complain that is it "Just Libertarian Propoganda". I highly suggest you read the book, even if you disagree with the premise.
http://www.nhbar.org/publications/archives/displa
http://www.bsos.umd.edu/gvpt/lpbr/subpages/review
I tend to suspect that the oh-so-clever accounting techniques and special purpose entities Andrew Fastow cooked up to keep Enron's debts off their books was far more complicated than Ken could understand. (They're certainly too much for my little brain.) But instead of asking tough questions, Ken just shrugged and signed off on them.
Didn't Lay earn a PhD in Economics from Univeristy of Houston? I'd say he was smart enough to fathom the ins and outs of shady accounting practices and off-the-books recordkeeping.
Thats the only way to be sure :)
Kind Regards
"A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us w
That means he was already charged/convicted and could not cop to a lesser
charge (the plea-bargin tool) in exchange for information regarding anyone.
I think the massive depression and anxiety would be enough of an explanation
without assuming foul play.
Never assume malice to what can be explained by incompetence (or other human weaknesses).
"You sound like a Republican... can't tell the difference between his head and his ass."
And neither end has a brain. But they say they're Christian, oh yes, and can't understand why Arabs are unhappy to be killed. Shouldn't oil and weapons profits be enough justification?
"No, but people go to jail if they don't comply with SOX. People ARE people."
Yes they are people. People working on a job, in a publicly traded company, with OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY, and they should be able to prove they did it correctly. Legally. Nothing is missing, nothing was fudged or shaded or twsted, turned, swapped or hidden. If those same people want to go home and do those things with their own money in their privately held business, fine. That is between them and their spouses (and the IRS, in a different way). But what they do on the job as a trustee of other people's money should be provably correct and legal.
This isn't a case of "Prove to me you aren't a drug dealer". This is "I gave you $100 and you said you would invest it. Show me the money, account for where it went, or go to jail."
Or to jump on another old trop, faceless corporations do have faces. The people with the no kidding dirty hands. If you hold them accountable, the "faceless corporation" becoems more accountable too. No more diluting the blame into insignificance. You can't hide behind "just following orders".
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
I'd hate for "Kenny-Boy" to get the last laugh on America, you know, by dying early.
the fucker burns in hell. He deserves it. All those peoples lives he's screwed up for his own gain.
>> "Apparently, his heart simply gave out," said Lay's pastor, Dr. Steve Wende of Houston's First United Methodist Church.
It amazes me that his pastor doesn't excommunicate his ass.
Ted Stevens is from Alaska
Ted Stevens is but a rank amateur compared to Robert Byrd. And of course, unlike Stevens, Byrd has such a colorful background, being unanimously elected as the "Exalted Cyclops" of his local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. I mean, you can't beat stuff like that.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Now I don't know enough about Ken Lay to proclaim whether he was a psychopath or not, but it sorta makes me wonder. I mean we already know that he had no remorse in shafting the investors, the employees and everyone, but the GP's moving testimony just makes some more pieces fall into place.
Here are some relevant paragraphs:
Does it sound yet like Ken Lay telling employees a rags-to-riches story about creating the company from nothing?
Also worth remembering:
So in a way I'm not surprised that someone would be manipulated to the point of respecting the guy who shafted him. Psychopaths are _good_ at that kind of thing. Damn good. _Incredibly_ good. Unless you happen to be the direct target of their mind games or power games or intimidation games (they do all that a lot), you could live next to one for a decade and respect the heck out of him.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"natural" death is when you don't pop your pills when your heart is in that kind of shape.
Its hard to prove he didn't take his medications. Its hard to disclose his medical records or even access them. I doubt we will hear any real proof either way.
Now, if we find out there were more than legal benefits to his death, then that should be enough for most of us...
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
...because to have a coronary, I thought you had to have a heart.
Oh my god, i found a penny
He is chilling on the beach sipping on a margarita enjoying his new identity given to him by the elite who he helped make richer by robbing thousands of people of everything they had.
> died of a massive coronary before he could receive his sentence
Sounds like he got his sentence afterall. And swifter than the court system could mete a slap on the wrist out.
I bet that someone as rich as him (you can bet he squirrelled away lots of cash in numbered offshore bank accounts) can easily fake his own death.
A compulsive liar - with utter contempt for the law and democratic norms of 'justice' - faced with the prospect of spending so much time in jail - with lots of friends in high places (he was the #1 contributor to G. W. Bush's campaign in 2000 - he lent GWB his own private jet for campaigning)
People like that NEVER do time in jail.. Lets not let him get away with it....
The CIA's favourite techniques are:
1) Plane/car crashes.
2) Heart attacks.
They didnt want him talking. They were probably stringing him along the entire way saying things like, "its ok lay my boy, well get you out of this mess!"... "Why dont you take a nice vacation to colorado and well arange everything!"
The first thing i thought when i saw this this morning was CIA. Its wayyy too convienient. Kinda funny it made slashdot though, wasnt expecting that.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
While there is nothing wrong with creating laws to punish people guilty of theft and fraud, there are big problems with creating a system where everyone must prove their innocence on a regular basis or be considered guilty. Especially, like in the Sarbanes-Oxley, it is a series of vauge rules that are very difficult to comply with and can be arbitrarily enforced. This is more fodder for the government to go after it's critics, or to demand political donations as protection money for non-enforcement, or to help a company with political connections by going after it's competitor, and the fixed costs of compliance help keep smaller buisnesses with competing with large corporations. It is not going to stop this kind of corporate crime, it is just another tool for the government to aid certain corporate criminals, and harrass other people they don't like.
At best this sort of thing just takes away resorces which could otherwise be usefully used to identify criminals. At worst it actually gives criminals a way to hide what they are up to.
FYI - nobody cares. Thanks for playing.
Too bad for your BDS-driven fantasies, but Enron's accounting fraud happened in the 1990s - when Bill Clinton was President.
What's the color of the sky on the planet you're on?
with the help of the administration staff....
with a new passport ID, and his level of connection...
my rat brain sez, heart attack at age 64, with full staff attending him daily... this is fishy.
First, so what even if I am an uninformed public shareholder? Does that suddenly mean I really don't need to know, should not be informed of, or have a way to find out the internal workings of how the compnay I own a piece of is operated?
Dude--it's not like you couldn't do that BEFORE S.Ox came into being. In order to be a publically traded company the SEC still had a fairly long list of reporting requirements and accounting practices. Yes, there were too many places where you could still cook the books and fabricate public earnings statements but this Sarbanes Oxley business is sometimes akin to using 100 tonnes of concrete to plug a thumb-sized leak in the dam.
Even if I can't tell a balance sheet from a chart of accounts or a budget, the structure and contents of the reports have to be understandable, so the underlying management philosophy can be understandable, so the intent of the managers and Board and prospects for the company can be inferred.
If you cannot tell the difference between basic financial documents then you shouldn't be investing. Period. I mean it--don't even get into mutual funds if you can't tell the difference between its prospectus and a bus schedule and don't trust your broker. That is the case even with S.Ox now in place. Learn the basics of finance and do your reearch before putting money you count on into such investments. If your broker will not give you inofrmation you ask for then fire his arse. *INFORMED* investors lost minimal amounts in the Enron crash becasue the corporate fundamentals were sideways and heading south. People who lost money were those who depended on and trusted not only the word of morally bankrupt executives, but that of fund managers/brokers/"experts" who said "trust me--this is a cyclical thing and it'll turn around so you should stay in for the long haul to recover your losses". Easy enough for them to say--it is not their own money they're playing with.
BTW there ARE initiatives that are/were being considered outside S.Ox that would be much less onerous for corporate accountants. Firstly, there are standard reporting formats that are being more aggressively implemented. In Canada businesses have things like the General Index of Financial Information, which defines a set of standard accounts/codes that corporations must adhere to when filing taxes. In the US, public companies must have insider trading information available online. All over the world, they are looking at mandating things like financial statements being available online, on-demand in XBRL format. This way every corporation has information structured in the same way, whenever you want it, in the same way we can with RSS feeds from our favourite blogs.
Second, If SEC enforcement had been doing its job, then maybe we wouldn't need more law.
IF the SEC was not enforcing existing rules well enough, how could you expect them to adequately enfore even MORE rules?
It costs nothing to just put it out there and let people see what's up. But that wasn't happening.
Holy CRAP is that a ridiculous statement. It costs a LOT to "just put it out there". I work in the industrial automation field and *I've* had requests to modify/upgrade plant-floor systems because they do not meet the demands of Sarbanes Oxley. Operators and maintenance people have to be given logins. Companies have to know details down to the stupidest level sometimes--stuff that wouldn't be remotely important to investors. Yes, there is definitely a use for some of the data but what does Joe Schmoe Investor care about how many hours Employee 3422 spent reprogramming a controller so every tenth of a cent of operations & maintenance expenses can be backed by detailed records? Yes, you need to know the 5000-foot-picture as an investor, but you don't need to see each blade of grass on the ground below.
You don't get to decide what is the best way for me to do that. You don't get to play with my money and tell me to shut up and be happy
died today. -- Queen
The Dutch will inherit the earth. If not, we'll settle for a bit of ocean. Beta delenda est!
How about: "Errrk! :thump:"?
"It's time to take life by the cans." ~ Bender ("Bendin' in the Wind", ep. 3-13)
Good.
Don't worry. There are bands of attorneys already converging on civil court to suck down all that wealth. He doesn't need to be alive for his estate to be contested in civil court.
His family won't starve. They probably won't get the whole wad of loot, either.
Skilling! We have your number buddy. Grim Reaper is coming for you next pal!
Does anyone else get the feeling that this was really suicide. Reason #1: He was to scare to go to prison. Reason #2: He wanted to leave something to his family, because everything was going to be lost in civil suits.
First, so what even if I am an uninformed public shareholder? Does that suddenly mean I really don't need to know, should not be informed of, or have a way to find out the internal workings of how the compnay I own a piece of is operated?
I didn't mean uninformed with respect to the specific workings of a given company. I meant uninformed on what Sarbox is and what it costs to implement.
The reality is that your interests as a shareholder are almost certainly _undermined_ by sarbox because businesses have to pay more to implement and maintain the procedures, which costs you as a shareholder not just directly on today's bottom line, but also in distracting the business from it's core competency. Sarbox compliance isn't just hiring a couple more lawyers and bean counters - there are procedural requirements that ripple down through every level of the organization in order to produce the additional reporting.
PUBLIC CORPORATIONS ARE NOT PEOPLE!!!!11!!!!
Right, but Soylent Green is.
...wait.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
Why is Kenneth Lay's death marked suicide when he died of natural causes?
It is the owner that crashes the system. If you are enough of an idiot to put 50 background processes in Windows you sho
Talk about getting off..
Oh well his justice wasnt on earth so now he gets the ultimate judgement!
Feel sorry for all the people who lost their life savings to the collective of corporate crooks.
Karma, the real kind as discussed in eastern philosophy is based on a person's ACTIONS. Not emotions. Feeling an emotion is not an act of karma. Besides
>adding to the pain of that persons passing
how does feeling happy that this scumbag died cause pain to anyone else? Crowing about it in the face of his relatives might be bad karma, but considering they were the chief secondary beneficiaries of his rapacious greed, the chances of his relatives being surprised about this reaction would be extremely low. And if they had a lot of feelings to get hurt, maybe they'd feel compassion for the victims of Lay's evil, and feel relief that some people would feel a bit of vindication at his death. Personally, I think him dying now is getting off easy. Piece of shit.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
"And I hope that you die
And your death'll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I'll watch while you're lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I'll stand o'er your grave
'Til I'm sure that you're dead"
Be heard || Be herd
anyone feel like modding this person? Anyway, yea a jail sentence is way tougher than the death sentence; I screamed 'WELL ROT THEN at the TV when I heard Lay got off so easily. Then it came to my attention that he died in Aspen. What? He wasn't in Jail? Why the fuck not?
Lots of people think that Sadaam Hussein & Osama Bin Laden and anyone who stands accused of similar atrocities should face the death sentence, but being incarcerated in some shithole jail for 20 years (with intermittent acts of buggery by suitably hairy gay inmates) I think might hurt them more than Martyrdom. The same goes for the Bali bomber; I can't imagine that indonesian jails are fun for anyone.
In a twist, however, I think that a more suitable 'punishment', if you'd like to call it that for Mr Bin Laden would to be in some contrived way forced to live like an ordainary citizen of one of the countries he supposedly wages holy war against. I doubt if it'd change his view of the world (though you can only live in hope that this type of person's views are changeable) but I think it might force humility on a self-proclaimed warrior.
When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
Ken Lay's death prompts confusion on Wikipedia
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
He paid a physician to "spare his family further grief" by filing the cause of death as a "massive coronary", when, in fact, he committed suicide by overdose.
Me? I'm dishonest, and a dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest. Honestly. It's the honest ones you want to watch out for, because you can never predict when they're going to do something incredibly... stupid.
Nah, that's too much of a conspiracy theory.
Suprisingly, according to Texas Law since Ken Lay never made it to his sentencing, he died an innocent men. Well I guess it is not a human judge that he needs to worry about facing now.
Damn. What the hell have I been thinking.
damn him and his ancestors
To me, the shocking thing about all these hateful posts is that this guy wasn't a serial killer or a rapist; he committed white collar crimes. Securities fraud. Wire fraud. Making false statements to banks.
..and giving you the right to do whatever you want to his dead corpse, or literally "piss" all over his family? Seriously, have you people gone completely fucking mad?
.. just trying to provoke a reaction. Please --- don't reply. Just stop and think about what you're saying. Think about the bad things you've done in life, and how someone who might not know the full story could perceive those things as being much worse than they actually were. I wonder how many people in this thread have a school-zone speeding ticket or a DUI. Are you evil?
You can dance around and tell me that his actions resulted in thousands of millions of deaths or whatever else, but he wasn't charged or convicted for any of those things. Let's see - he ended up with about ten convictions, resulting in possibly up to 30 years in jail (had he made it to sentencing).. and he was evil?
I think you folks need to take a step back and look at what you're saying. Even if he personally stole thousands of dollars from you, does that really equate to being "evil"?
This guy broke modern-day accounting laws. Yes, some people lost lots of money. Welcome to the wonderful world of "investing" - that's why you get interest on the money, because there are no risk-free investments, period.
I'm not an especially spiritual individual, but I sure do pray that this "mob" attitude doesn't represent the majority. Oh, and you can write off what I say as "Troll" or "Flamebait"
for maintenance just when his brain was at peak demand for oxygen. So he suffered a rolling blackout.
This guy have SO much venom hurled against him in houston I won't be surpised to find his body dug up one day and horrible, wonderfully horrible things done to it.
I will be also be fun to watch the tasteless slurs hurled at the the grieving family. If I could get a ticket I would be right down there, laughing at thier tears, mocking the kids and grand kids, making sure that everyone of them understands that the world is a better, happier, less evil place now that the man they cared about is dead...
Basically, it's a GOOD thing to make sure that everyone else thinking of destroying SO many lives understands that even when dead you will the torture will not end, and that it will be passed on as long as people still remember.
On recommendations from his new head financial advisor, Satan has announced that company 401k matching will henceforth only be honored on purchases of company stock.
Just wondering, of all the guys, his testimony against him from people who cut deals for less time. And he did in the past urge for strong accounting practices. As for loans, everyone took loans out, was a common practice. In the end they got him for 6 counts? Far less than everyone else.
Seems the government wanted him no matter what. Didnt he actually loose almost 90% of his money because he kept enron stock?
Dont know, but He seems like an escape goat to me. Worked his way up, had his PHD, and did alot for the community.
I dont like when the government offers deals, most people will lie to get a sentence reduced to 5 years.
Laws are only as good as the people who enforce them.
What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean....
Companies are already spending money on internal reporting. Or at least they should be. Sarbanes imposes greater requirements on what must be collected and reported. So the cost isn't in collection, unless we're talking about companies that are serious cowboys and flouting both old AND new law.
The additional cost will be in the new reporting in new ways. Is it more? Yes. But again, was the previous system adequate? If it wasn't, and that seems to be the evidence, then reporting costs would, and properly should, go up You were already spending money on a system that wasn't working, so now you'll be spending somewhat more on a system that will. It just becomes a question of how much more, and are we (the compnay and investors) getting good value from the information reporting systems we create. That is exactly the same problem every MIS in every enterprise anywhere has. Completely independent of Sarbanes-Oxley, the management should have a feel for where the money and effort come from and go to.
If Sarbanes-Oxley is forcing the collection and reporting of useless information, that is a flaw. But just saying that if costs go up it must be bad is seriously shortsighted analysis. Especially considering the opacity investors were facing. And if Lay was to be believed, he wasn't being served by his internal information systems either.
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
Most people here are eager to 'piss on Lay's grave', but I never see people pointing fingers at the tech industry. When Enron tanked, it wiped out about $66 billion worth of market cap. Tech stocks like Lucent, Cisco, JDSU, and others had far bigger losses. Lucent took out about $1/4 trillion worth of market cap. Are the heads of Lucent 4 times 'guiltier' than the Enron executives?
What about all the people who worked at dot coms? They pulled in big salaries, blew money on upscale offices and Herman Miller Aeron chairs for everyone, all the time knowing that the businesses had no commercial value. Some people couldn't even describe what their dotcoms actually did. After the VC money was spent, and the stocks tanked, all those people scattered to the wind. I suspect that more than a few people reading slashdot lived the good life on some poor old widow's mutual fund money in the heyday of dotcom boom. I'll wait to see if anyone turns up to piss on their graves.
But an attitude of caveat emptor and a basic understanding of capital markets sure would have helped.
Yes, because we ALL know that Wikipedia is the most accurate, honest, unbiased, and trustworthy source to cite, especially in regard to emotionally charged current events?
*rolling eyes*
Libertas in infinitum
...do indeed have a party. In fact there are two of them; the Libertarian Party, and the Constitution Party.
n ited_States)U nited_States)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_Party_(U
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_Party_(
I tend to align with both, but moreso with the Libertarian Party than the CP.
Libertas in infinitum
Ding dong the bitch is dead
Which bitch?
The thieving bitch
Ding dong the thieving bitch is dead
...a scheme of complex offshore holdings...
In other words, money laundering.
Does the Enron case prove that the social security model of Europe is better? as a European, I have a hard time accepting that I should trust my life with the corporation I work with, especially after seeing how all of them (and not just my boss) are doing business. The Enron case confirms my distrust on corporations and my preference to social security models supported by the state/government. I certainly wouldn't like to have no security/health insurance/pention when I grow old.
Of course there are other options in USA, aren't they? but how easy are those options to follow?
I want to be sure. I want to stick a knife in his lifeless corpse just for sure.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
A Corporation is like a psycopath or child, in that it does not have a conscience or any real internal self-policing mechanism. So it is entirely reasonable to treat Corporations as potentially "guilty" (of acting selfishly and purely in the pursuit of profit) and this requires some form of external monitoring/punishment.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Just remember, if Vince Foster had only had a gun with him he'd be alive today.
The more I get to know people the more I like my dogs.
Ha Ha !
Guns are for wimps... Use a crossbow.. this way you can pin them to their chair when you go postal.
I see far too many comments considering that homosexual rape is a fit punishment for somebody.
You guys are barbaric, you presume to be civilized but in many ocassions you show ideas no better than the ones spoused by a Hutu or Serbian war criminal.
It speaks volumes about US society that many consider normal a situation in which inmates in jail can be abused, tortured or raped.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Oh my God, you've killed Kenneth...
You, uh, well, non-bastards?!
"shafting... the employees..."
Now, as an aside, how exactly did he shaft the employees? His crime was concealing the fact that the company was tanking, thus screwing (some) investors. The company would have tanked even faster if not for the criminality of Lay - hence, the net effect on the employees was that they recieved wages for a longer period of time than had been the case if Lay & co had stayed within the law.
Of course, lots of employees had their careers screwed over and their stock options and stock made worthless by the bankruptcy, but that would have come to pass even faster if not for the fraud. (This was not a case of Lay stealing company cash and spending it on booze and hookers, after all.)
I'm not from Cali or a third-world country so I'm not exactly familiar with rolling blackouts; but man, I wish we could bring back the 2003 East-Coast blackout.
......oh, yeah, and remember: turn down your air-conditioning if you don't want it to repeat itself.
Benefits:
- being able to see all the stars (including Mars, which was dangerously 'close' to the Moon that night) from the downtown of one of the larger Canadian cities.
- neighbourhoods brought together by shared adversity/boredom: everyone was outside drinking the beer before it got warm in the fridge
- free gelato from gelato place for those who wanted to wait in lines that stretched up and down the block
- dining by forced candlelight in what few restaurants were still open by virtue of operating solely on gas
- the bizarre sight of people in Quebec still having power right across the river (I guess I just revealed what city it was to anyone with a decent sense of Canadian geography...)
- watching the power come back grid by grid by grid
- day off for most workers starting at 4:00 pm or so.
Disadvantages:
- my grandmother needed surgery that day - cardiac issues; the hospital, being on emergency back up power, didn't want to chance it. She had to wait until the grid came back up. (She's still alive and kicking though, nearing 90. I imagine many were not so lucky.)
- lost revenue for said gelato place. (Although the free samples probably brought in many new customers.)
- mass chaos on roads, as 6-lane intersections become fourway stops.
- no water, unless it comes from the store, for those of us who had wells (yeah, it's weird. There's an underground lake in my city and my family never switched onto the city water. No fluoride for us!)
- drunken pretentious highschool kids wandering down the street singing "Jerusalem" and reciting the first act of "The Importance of Being Earnest"
I know. The lack of power is a serious problem for our western societies. And what Enron did, if indeed, as you say, they were directly responsible for the rolling blackouts in California, is deplorable. But as an able-bodied youngster in a high population-density area, this long-ish blackout was immensely entertaining; far from making us thankful that we did, indeed have power once we got it back --at my house, that was 3 days later, mmm mmm, no shower-- it made us sad that our electronic society has cut people off from their fellow man. Everybody seemed so much friendlier and happier without power. We all wanted it to be a yearly occurrence.
Inheritance gets whatever he had left + life insurance benefits (which I bet is a pretty good chunk of any state budget)
IANAL, either; however, I believe a finding of "guilty" by a jury in criminal court may be admissible in civil court. (A plea of guilty would be as well; I understand this is the main distinction between that and a plea of "nolo contendere" — a NC plea is inadmissable in other proceedings.) The class-action vultures will probably be targeting his estate on behalf of Enron shareholders and pensioners soon enough. The heirs in his will shouldn't plan to spend their new inheritance any time soon.
As an Atheist, I get no satisfaction from him keeling over.
Yeah; believers at least have the hope that he might be facing a more lasting sentence from a Higher Court; I doubt his heart would be lighter than a Shu feather.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
The down-side to Sarbox is that it massively increases accouting burden and raises the bar in terms of funds and overhead required for any small company to go public. Most venture investors and entreprenuers feel that Sarbox goes too far.
Of course they do, anything that scruntinizes them and costs them money they feel goes to far. EPA regulations, pesky child labor laws, OSHA mine safety, minmum wage, this list goes on and on. Damn waht happened to the 1800s and the Robber Barons?
The fact is, if human being weren't so greedy, selfish, and easily corrupted by wealth and power, the cost could be saved. Unfortunately, we need to be shown time and again, they indeed are. Sarbox is the price we have to pay to rein in evil people like Ken Lay.
We are accepting donations now.
Is that you, R. Kelly?
Obviously some annoying conspiracies have caused you to close your mind to distinct possibilities. Go revisit the 911 situation again. Do the research yorurself. See what's out there. It has way more validity than holocaust denial. Way more.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
That puppy I kicked? Probably would've bitten a small child someday.
I no longer consider 64 to be that old, given both the progress of modern medicine and the fact that I'm now 50 (:-), but it's old enough that when you've spent a few years riding a high-risk company down the tubes and another few years of trials, been convicted, and you're about to be given a sentence of "Die in Jail, Loser", it's gotta be pretty stressful, and a heart attack is no surprise. Autopsy may tell us whether it was that or suicide, but either way the guy died from stress and fear, and that's a sad thing - even if he did deserve to die in jail from old age.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Hey he did more living in his 60 years than most people do in their lives. And while he died with money and probably with a roof over his head, many of the people he screwed over at enron have no pensions and won't have such comforts when their time comes.
Screw Ken Lay. I hope the worms don't gag.