On Being Screwed...
One of the great ironies of the Bush Administration is that it will take a Republican in office for us to deal with some of the ethics in business issues. Not that Bush will do anything, just that his "Texas - Anything Goes" attitude is exposing anew, the smarmy side of Washington DC. Enron is not about all the things that were done, but about the things that weren't done. The decisions that were dropped, the rules dismissed, the problems ignored.
The Clinton administration had put a lot of pressure on the Cayman Islands and had put into effect banking rules that could have damaged efforts like Enron. What did the Bush Administration do when it came to town? It put those rules under review and then dropped them. They stood by and let the events unfold because they were in bed with Enron. You only have to look at the number of people in the administration that have ties to Enron, or were hired with Enrons approval.
Global Crossing is another interesting case that is moving under the wire because we are all looking at Enron so closely. The company's former vice president of finance has called into question the accounting practices of the company [see a theme here]. In the proposed bankruptcy filing they are asking to be able to keep over $700,000,000, so they can keep going under new ownership. Simply insane is the word for this proposal. Shareholders lose everything, and the new owners get a nice 700 million dollar cash reward...maybe I am missing something here?
Then there is Qwest. Ahh, Qwest we hardly knew you. Since one year ago, Qwest stock has fallen almost 80%!!! The linked chart shows just how bad they have done since the merger between Qwest and USWest. One of the ironies of this deal was that the other suitor at the time was Global Crossings. Given the whole history of stupid, ignorant leadership at USWest [I know, I worked there for 13.5 years], it is so appropriate that they got saddled by two such huge losers. The other irony is that Qwest leadership dumped most of the old USWest leadership, calling USWest a "poorly managed company." I wonder what words Qwest would use to describe themselves?...mj
Smarmy
adj : unpleasantly and excessively suave or ingratiating in manner or speech; "buttery praise"; "gave him a fulsome introduction"; "an oily sycophantic press agent"; "oleaginous hypocrisy"; "smarmy self-importance" [syn: buttery, fulsome, oily, oleaginous, unctuous]
11:13:48 AM 
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