Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

Just remove the " chip" from the end of that last flash animation link. It should be:

http://www.democrats.org/specialreports/bushtaxscheme/flash.html

Matha Steward made herself, and her larger than life image, her product. A one woman path dependant network. If you are going to follow that strategy here's a tip - don't lie to Congress. The Fed's are simply taking advantage of the same network effects. Martha is a highly-connected node, a good place to send a message if you want the message to spread far. I have zero sympathy for the 'pretty lady', she knew the game, she played it hard, she screwed up and got caught. She made reputation as issue, then she didn't properly tend to her reputation. We don't like our psychopaths to have more estrongen than testosterone so we pretend they aren't really psychopaths. The nineties was a high reward time for psychopaths everywhere.

The fraud in the Worldcom case is clear, even blatant. Ebbers and crew should get serious jail time. If they don't, the fix is in.

The fraud at Enron is less obvious, more difficult to find and even more difficult to prove. The overall structure that led to collapse looks, feels and smells crooked. However, transaction by transaction, the fraud is not as clear cut as was Worldcom. I think your theory (uhm, cheap inference with no fact or analysis, not really a theory) about Bush influence is wrong. The Feds have thrown the book, the library, the building that holds the library and the kitchen sink at Andrew Fastow. He just won't give Skilling and Lay up for a deal. It looks like the man is willing to do life to protect them. There is an interesting story there, I don't know what it is though. Eventually, the forensic accountants will get Skilling and Skilling will give up Lay.

The more interesting and untold story of Enron is the gap between the ability to liquify risk and the reporting of that risk to shareholders. Income statements and balance sheets are now simply very coarse approximations of the economic activity happening in a company. Assuming no changes in the value of risk and intellectual capital they tell the whole story. However, the value of risk and intellectual capital seem more and more like the real story every year.

Ack. I can't even master copy and paste. Sigh.

Thanks for finding the error. It's fixed now.

Great to see ya linkin' to NewsMax!

Just a few of the scandals listed on the page you cite are:

JetBlue Snubs U.S. Aircraft Companies for the French

Planned Parenthood Uses Taxpayer Money to Recruit Children

and my favorite:

Enron Pales Next to Daschlegate Death Cover-Up