Post #290,231
8/3/07 1:17:44 AM
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'The Smartest Guys in the Room'
If you missed the first pass (PBS's [link|http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/enron/| Independent Lens]) - it's back, at least locally.
You really have the see the videos of these guys, the Deregulation Desperadoes? their private jokes - and this 2 hrs. out of the 100 hours of film they began from: to appreciate fully what a Masters in Business Administration does so readily, to the malleable psyche - operating with 'permission from Above.'
And worse - see evidence of just How Much so Many of the movers and shakers at Citibank, Merrill-Lynch (and the other 'Useful Idiots' == Enron's apt and exact nomenclature) - were willing to swallow wink-wink-nudge -- to keep the Scam afloat long enough ... to Get Theirs.
(Arthur Anderson's price? $1M/week to pretend that 'no quarterly profit/loss statement is really necessary for overseeing an operation with such complex sources of income'... cha. cha. cha.)
Insult to massive injury? Kenny Boy's massive funding of that wastrel from Crawdad - may well have made the Difference (notwithstanding all the other forces, in those heady days of traffic barricades and dangling chads.)
Have a chuckle at the California energy down-time scam - yet another malleable branch of Bizness, Seeing any old Chance for Profit BAMP (by any mea..) And we thought those tobacco guys taking the Fifth.. Hey, "it was all too easy .... all too easy"
Wow! if only we could just leave all government to businessmen - maybe create a whole Admin chock full o' them?? why, there'd be no more wars.
I wants me one o' dem rilly-Free Market thingies, too - First thing, I buys me an Attorney General; no need for those expensive Uniformed mercenaries: keep overhead low; just Market the Dream-stuff.
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Post #290,235
8/3/07 8:39:41 AM
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ahem, there is no regulatory requirement for
quarterly statements. Youse may chortle all you wish but unless there is a law one does not have to kiss public ass.
thanx,
bill
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free american and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 51 years. meep
reach me at [link|mailto:bill.oxley@cox.net|mailto:bill.oxley@cox.net]
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Post #290,242
8/3/07 10:17:37 AM
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Thom Hartmann makes this point
These guys (and others like them) were operating within the law.
The real trick is to change the laws, thus the rules of the game.
Tom Sinclair
Kaylee: Wash, tell me I'm pretty.
Wash: Were I unwed, I would take you in a manly fashion.
Kaylee: Because I'm pretty?
Wash: Because you're pretty.
- "Heart of Gold", Firefly
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Post #290,689
8/12/07 2:38:25 AM
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Ferrous ions are everywhere, here
The Iron-y -- that *ALL* these mondo Top-Dog orgs. with CIEIOS who have themselves bent, twisted 'rules' Beast-style, to get where They Are:
..imagining ..for-THAT-long!
that this bunch of glib spielers could somehow materialize such massive proceeds -- from no visible (or even imaginable) sources. Worse: imagine their concluding that they need not Check On Anything because, surely
these fellow biznessmen could not be That Corrupt!! - -
(No 'quarterly report' ?? OK how about dissecting an ANNUAL?)
right on down to the internal dummy holding-cos trading bogus paper == The earlier CREEP show,
as unravelled by just a couple reporters (Committe to Reelect ... remember them?)
(Imeanweallshavebitofftruthiness,nowandthen -- but We Are all Honorable Men. (for various def'ns.))
I suppose this is why Doze is still King of the biz IT-heap - the CTO is a first cousin of the CEO, thrice removed. Got their MBAs from the same mail-order. Maybe it is (already?) pointless to talk about Enron; when corruption is such that ONE Arb can extract an ANNUAL bonus of ~One Hundred Million $USD - and that is called, merely "smart biznessman." One presumes then that Enron, in cozy meetings -- is dissed largely because they -
1) got caught. How perfectly matched to the methods and goals of the Cheney Admin.
2) brought bright lights, for a few moments, into How corps can so easily play this shell game and
3) made themselves, other wanna-be perps look Stupid, unable to do it even Better.
(Even new 'Regulations' don't mean shit, when the major players' largest attention is >on< simply, Not Getting Caught.) We are Rome, with transistors and more expensive chariots:
Only today Caligula is a 'we' -
that Top 00.1%; that 300,000 who extract as much of the Sigma-wealth as the 25? 35? 50 million (this year?) chattels at the bottom: all via manipulating abstract , obfuscated "financial instruments", via numbers utterly disconnected from anything Alive.
Enron? - which week will it disappear into the attention-span pit.
Like the S&L bailout: there will be no Corrections in a system with magnets under every roulette wheel - when it is working so well for those who Count, it must be 'conserved'.
The 'public ass' deserves a LOT of kissing at these rates of profit-skimmimg by the 1:1000
('Course you imagine You will soon be a beneficiary of the same rulez - just any. day. next.
Right?) Social Darwinism Is such fun, for the wannabe who is sure that he's devious-enough.
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Post #290,706
8/12/07 12:12:55 PM
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didnt anyone ever tell ya that the stock market
is like vegas without house rules?(for the non gamblers a house rule is a published guarranty of return from eg:90-97% of every dollar spent) Sheesh, old as you are Im sure you must have noticed that by now.
Stock prices are a representation of the wishes of the purchaser, they have zero intrinsic value of the companies assests.
It would be like lending me 3 million dollars with no collateral then crying foul when I spent it all and cant meet the payments. After I return my leased benz and jag, get kicked out of the rental manse, you would collect nothing. This is the basis of the stock market. So quitcher bitchin
thanx,
bill
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free american and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 51 years. meep
reach me at [link|mailto:bill.oxley@cox.net|mailto:bill.oxley@cox.net]
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Post #290,749
8/12/07 8:06:52 PM
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There are limits to the shell game -
or Lay et al wouldn't have made it to the docket, finally. At the very least, we can (could..) regulate dummy holding cos. as well as notice what replaces that dodge, and so on. We do not have to favor corruption, even though it can never be eliminated.
You shovel shit against the tide, or eat it a lot earlier.
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Post #290,276
8/4/07 8:59:05 AM
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Quarterly earnings statements have a downside
They make it harder for companies to execute long range plans. The lead to "creative" accounting practices to make sure earnings are "correct" instead of simply being accurate.
I've seen several articles where people are suggesting one of the best things to do for the stock market would be to encourage companies to stop releasing quarterly numbers. And forecasts. Especially the forecasts.
===
Kip Hawley is still an idiot.
===
Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link|http://DocHope.com|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats].
[link|http://DocHope.com|http://DocHope.com]
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Post #290,277
8/4/07 9:40:10 AM
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GOOG is in that boat.
(Unless things have changed recently,) Google doesn't provide guidance on its stock. While I think it's a good long-term policy, it can have an important downside. [link|http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5253416|NPR]: March 9, 2006 \ufffd Morning Edition Stock in Google slipped 3 percent on Wednesday after the Internet company said it accidentally posted financial forecasts on its Web site. Google says the forecasts were not supposed to be released and that, in some cases, they are no longer accurate.
Google deliberately avoids offering the kind of quarterly sales forecasts that many companies provide. As a result, investors tend to seize on whatever information the company does make public, even accidentally. In recent weeks, that's meant a wild ride for Google stock. Shares that topped $475 less than two months ago are worth 25 percent less today.
Google managers insist they're not distracted by such short-term fluctuations.
"There's this belief that somehow the management team controls the stock price directly. And that's probably illegal. And it's certainly a bad way of running a company," CEO Eric Schmidt told an analysts' conference last week. "Stock price evolves as a lagging indicator of the greatness of a business and its success. And any attempt to manipulate it, other than as a lagging indicator, to me is suspect."
Google stressed its long-term orientation two years ago when it first sold stock to the public. A "founders memo" drafted by co-founder Larry Page said Google would not provide traditional quarterly financial forecasts. Page said focusing on such short-term targets would be as pointless as a dieter stepping on a scale every half hour.
In the absence of quarterly guidance about sales and profits, though, investors have been left to guess about Google's weight. That can cause big swings in the company's stock price, whenever the chief financial officer warns of slowing growth, for example, or when outdated information is accidentally posted on the Google website.
"The no-guidance policy generally tends to make things more volatile, not less volatile for the stock. So as an analyst, we usually recommend against that," said Senior Analyst Safa Rashtchy of Piper Jaffray.
[...] Of course a stock analyst is going to say that lack of guidance is bad... And of course, stocks that provide do guidance can have large swings too (like when they don't achieve the guidance numbers). IIRC, Google has also said that they'll never split the stock, either. While that may make it more difficult for people to buy onesies or twosies of the stock, there are [link|http://boards.fool.com/Message.asp?mid=25722262&sort=postdate|ways around that], too. And the benefit is there isn't the overhead cost of doing the transaction for little objective benefit. I'm sure Rastchy would disagree with that policy as well. ;-) Cheers, Scott.
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