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."
Ted Bundy was polite and charming too.
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.
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You're kidding right...? The guy is 64 years old and has been dealing with a high stress situation for 5 years. I don't suppose that could have anything to do with it.
But hey, let's jump to the completely absurd conspiracy assumption as "much more likely" than the fact that "coronary heart disease (CHD) is the single leading cause of death in America." (American Heart Association, 2003 study).
I'll leave open the possibility of suicide, but I think it unlikely. There are far more convenient ways to kill yourself.
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.
Ted Bundy was polite and charming too.
..unless the polite charming people also have a lot of money
Well that does it! No more hanging around polite charming people for me. From now on I'm only going to associate with people that have demonic beady eyes and fresh blood dripping from their chin.
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"not everything is a conspiracy"
That's EXACTLY what THEY want you to think!
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.
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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.
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.
Posterity will ne'er survey
A nobler grave than this:
Here lie the bones of Kenneth Lay:
Stop, traveller, and piss.
Hi. Respect is EARNED.
What value would respect have if it was given freely and equally regardless of what a person is or does? What would be the point. This man was a criminal, and through his direct actions and deceipt harmed thousands of lives. Why should anyone respect that?
Perhaps people should respect his family, but this man dug his grave years ago.
Oh my god, they killed Kenny!
It's never so bad that it can't get worse.
Breakfast served all day!
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?
Dog is my co-pilot.
Ken Lay was a piece of shit. I couldn't care less if he blew sunshine up the ass of people who worked around him to make them think he was a great guy. Personally, I'm deeply saddened that the thieving fuck won't rot in jail the rest of his life like he fucking deserves. Of course, a better sentence would have been to put him in a room for 30 minutes with all the people he fucked over but that's of no avail now either. If it were up to me, I'd open a monument on his grave that invites people to come piss on it.
:)
Oh, and anyone who respected Ken Lay deserves to get pissed on too.
*anxiously awaits to get modded down*
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. -- H. L. Mencken
He had a heart attack because his arteries were embezzeling mass amounts of blood from his capillaries!
*badum ching*
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo!
Well, I know you will be shocked (SHOCKED!) to find out that a good chunk of dough (to the tune of several hundred-thousand dollars) went to Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney.
Ceci n'est pas une pipe.
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
Superman, is that you? You must have used your x-ray vision to look through the masks of the men in the video footage. Even if Zarqawi claimed responsibility, that's what? Two dead Americans? Versus how many thousands with ruined retirement accounts, millions of dollars lost? We have no way of knowing how many deaths, let alone injuries, Lay's activities caused.
c le/2006/06/09/AR2006060902040_2.html
I'd say it's a safe bet that he injured more than two Americans however. See, I live in California, and I personally have been injured by the actions of Enron, the company Lay oversaw.
Presumably, you have links from the AP regarding these AQ funded labs? I have this link
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/arti
which depicts Zarqawi as wanting to ally himself with AQ, but not being embraced by the terrorist organization's leadership. Furthermore, I have yet to find a mainstream media outlet which claims AQ was operating from Iraq before the war.
There is nothing absurd about calling Republicans traitors, it is indisputable: they seek to undermine the Constitution of the United States, and do not support the Constitution, the document upon which almost all of our laws depend. In so doing, they hope to destroy the United States, and are hence traitors, QED. There is nothing in the Constitution which allows violation of amendments one, five, or six, but there are the Republicans, supporting their violation each and every day.
Traitors all. To paraphrase the Traitor-in-Chief, "you're either with us, or you're with the Republicans."
You don't _have_ to be a traitor, you know. You can always read the Constitution, and educate yourself about this country's founding, and the ideals behind it.