Retiree funds . .
. . have no business investing in high risk "high growth" stocks. If they do, then someone is "guilty" and should be held liable. Unfortunately, "investment professionals" have built walls between themselves and retribution, which should be torn down. It'll take a few disasters to do that, and to engender any sense of due diligance after so long a winning streak.
Whether Microsoft is worse than other monopolies or not is irrelevant to this discussion, which was about Enron, WorldCom and the like - clear cases of theft by fraud (creative accounting). These frauds will result in reforms, which will work for a little while, until the crooks master the new game.
Microsoft, on the other hand, wants to control every aspect of my life and work. They want a cut on every financial transaction and want to control what I can access on the Internet and how I access it, what news and what entertainment is made available to the public through other media. They fully intend to control what technologies are avaialable and from whom they are available.
Microsoft has clearly stated, by the revenue growth projections they have released, that they fully intent to monopolize the market for accounting and business management software except in the largest companies (that comes later). Since their stated intent is to move this monopoly to .NET services, they will be in a position to hold the continued existance of any business hostage.
Bill Gates has stated he intends to own the digital rights to every work of art in the world. He has already bought the largest photo archive in existance, and ended access to most of it. Only the parts he says are accessable can be seen by the public or by publishers. He owns the rights to digital presentation of all the works in the National Museum, among many others. Since nearly all future publication will be by digital means, Bill Gates will control all publication.
This is not the sum total, but only a few examples of what is going on.
The desire to control every aspect of my life (and yours) is far more serious than a few crooks stealing money, even on a grand scale. Stolen money returns to the economy one way or another. If not, then it was an illusion anyway and not much was actually stolen. Freedom never returns without a long and generally bloody struggle resulting in many deaths and destroyed lives.
If money is more important to you than freedom, then yes, Enron is (to you) worse than Microsoft.
