<p>From Tompaine.com about Cox being appointed to be the watchdog over investments. Another great Bush pick. The fox guarding the hen house.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050726/soft_on_corporate_crime.php[/url]”>http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050726/soft_on_corporate_crime.php</a></p>
<p>“Indeed, Coxwho President Bush has tapped as the best possible choice to be Wall Street’s top copis the poster child for how laissez faire , country club Republicanism took trillions out of the pockets of Americans. If the Democratic Party can’t find it within itself to stand against putting Americans’ life savings in Cox’s hands, the party doesn’t stand for anything.”</p>
<p>ROFL. Trillions of dollars? And whose laissez faire was it? </p>
<p>At least, Miss FTCR got that last sentence right.</p>
<p>Yes trillions…with lost wages, lost retirement funds, lost insurance, deficits, debt, the money, YOU, XIggi, will owe when you are older for the debt and deficit we are creating, have fun paying it off to China…</p>
<p>I guess all that matters is businesses lining their pockets, at the expense of our citizens and patriotism</p>
<p>CGM, the US GDP is about $12 trillion. </p>
<p>While nobody in his right mind could defend corporate malfeasance and financial larceny, that does not provide sufficient reason to mix apples and oranges or throw RIDICULOUS figures in the air. The frauds at companies such Enron, Worldcom, Global Crossing were far from trivial, but many estimates of the losses are simply sliced baloney. For instance, have you considered that the much publicized accounts of people losing pensions worth millions at Enron forgot to mention that the retirement plans contained mostly … illiquid and overly inflated Enron stock. People who started at Enron with a couple of thousand dollars in retirement assets reported losing hundreds of thousand of dollars because the Enron stock was worthless. The reality is that it was fool’s money to begin with. The money NEVER really existed as the stock price resulted from the same frauds that built Enron. Next to the phantom losses, some real money was spent, and most of it was buying real assets. Real dollars simply change hands and the total net impact is on the US Economy is definitely not in the trillions. Real fortunes were lost in the dot.com boom but the real figure is far from different from the total “paper” valuation of the firms that went bust. </p>
<p>FWIT, you may want to check the percentage of the US savings over Total GDP for a dose of financial reality. </p>
<p>As far as the impact on the US deficit …</p>
<p>xiggi, someday hopefully you will gather millions in assets. If something bad happens and they blow up, remember what you wrote in post 4. </p>
<p>If real estate dropped 25%, do you think the economy would be affected? Do you think individuals would be affected? After all, we would just be giving back the gains of prior years?</p>
<p>Why are you defending Cox? He looks like a scumbag to me. Clearly there are better choices.</p>
<p>The 12 trillion number you used is a revenue number. The losses include revenues and assets. I don’t know how much was lost. Who cares? Cox doesn’t look like the most ethical person out there.</p>
<p>And whose fault was that? The investors? Enron lied and people trusted them, and now we will have a company man watching companies like Enron:</p>
<p>A power company lineman in Portland, who worked for the same utility all his life, observes that his retirement fund was worth $248,000 before Enron bought the utility and looted it, investing its retirement funds in Enron stock. Now, he says, his retirement fund is worth about $1,200. - was that fools money</p>
<p>“Toward the end, he sells $200 million in his own Enron stock while encouraging Enron employees to invest their 401(k) retirement plans in the company. Then he suddenly resigns, but not quickly enough to escape Enron’s collapse not long after.”</p>
<p>Strange that there has not been more anger over the Enron scandals. The cost was incalculable, not only in lives lost during the power crisis, but in treasure: The state of California is suing for $6 billion in refunds for energy overcharges collected during the phony crisis. </p>
<p>from: <a href=“http://www.illuminati-news.com/ebert-on-enron.htm[/url]”>http://www.illuminati-news.com/ebert-on-enron.htm</a></p>
<p>So if your Dad worked for a company all his life, and Enron took it over, well, I think you wouldn’t be so quick to fault your dad</p>
<p>Controversy over a key money manager’s dual role with Enron Corp. may influence which of two mega-losers in the Enron meltdown – the University of California or a Florida state pension fund – will control a $1.1 billion lawsuit against the firm’s top brass. </p>
<p>UC and the Florida state retirement system, the two public institutions that claim the unhappy distinction of being the biggest losers of all in the Enron debacle, are duking it out over the issue in a Houston court. </p>
<p>UC says it lost roughly $145 million in pension funds and endowment when the high-flying energy firm’s stock plunged last fall. The Florida state retirement system puts its Enron losses at a staggering $325 million, according to court records and published reports.</p>
<p>UC vies with Florida system to take helm in Enron suit 2 pension funds top losers in collapse of firm’s stock
Lance Williams, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, January 25, 2002
©2002 San Francisco Chronicle</p>
<p>Anyone who can defend Enron in any way loses a lot of credibility.</p>
<p>I don’t think that Xiggi was defending Enron, just pointing out that the method of calculating losses was not always accurate. If you put $10 into an account, and it is then valued at $100 before the company goes kaput, you lost $10. You can only lose what you put in. IMO, Xiggi is just saying that the $100 never existed, period. </p>
<p>I lost a lot with the Global Crossings disaster… not unsympathetic here - but I do think there should be some intellectual honesty in how these numbers are reported.</p>
<p>When one points out how SOME people had an inflated account balance, and lost that money, fair enough, but to not discuss the many many people that had their hard earned money disappear, is misleading. Do those people not count? And if you only show a part of the issue without talking about the many that were truly hurt, it is defending the company by saying, well it wasn’t that bad.</p>
<p>As well, we hear in California are pretty (&%# off at Enron.</p>
<p>Cox:</p>
<p>As a congressman, Cox voted repeatedly in the interests of Wall Street investment houses to undermine conflict-of-interest standards protecting investors and pension plans. He has voted against post-Enron proposals that would require executives to certify financial statements, strip bonuses from CEOs who falsify statements, and stop stock analysts from holding shares in the companies they cover (although he did ultimately vote for the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate reform bill when it became a fait accompli).</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050726/keep_cox_out_of_the_henhouse.php[/url]”>http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050726/keep_cox_out_of_the_henhouse.php</a></p>
<p>"In an analysis of Cox’s 17-year voting record in the House, Public Citizen said that on major bills dealing with corporate and accounting reform, investor legal rights and protection of retirement investments, Cox chose the shareholder-advocate position once out of 22 votes."latimes</p>
<p>CGM, I did not defend Enron in any way or shape. I raised the issue that the figure of trillions -in plural- of dollars was farfetched. I then gave ONE spedific example how losses reported in the Enron could have been blown out of proportion. </p>
<p>I never said that the real losses incurred by others did not exist. Quite to the contrary, I said that the losses were far from trivial. </p>
<p>As far as my posts in this discussion, I do not believe you can expect me to cover every angle of the Enron debacle, especially when offering a single example of the an issue germane to the subject of this thread. I’m sure that millions of pages have been written on the subject and Ken Lay has yet to face a tribunal. </p>
<p>As far as defending Enron, without going in excessive details, you should know that our family has suffered from the shenanigans of Enron in California, but that does not preclude to recognize that they were not the only “bastards” involved in the energy fiasco. While this does not diminish the culpability of Enron in manipulating the market, the arrogance of PGE and SCE coupled with the ineptitude of the local utility commissioners played a large, if not the largest role. They were so used to screw energy producers without mercy that they never envisioned that the shoe they use to kick everyone in the groin may fit another foot.</p>
<p>As a last comment, and in order to set the record straight, the last chapter of the losses of pensions by employees of Portland General has not been written yet. There are protection mechanisms for pensions plans that have been defrauded or victimized by less than honorable owners (such as PBGC and the judicial system). In this case, the proceeds of any sale of PGE by Enron has been earmarked to guarantee the repayment of lost pension funds. The possible sale of PGE should represent between 4 and 8 times the amount of the losses. In other words, the entire value of the company has been set aside to compensate claims by PGE employees. That said, a possible sale of PGE to a group of investors was nixed by regulators in March 2005.</p>
<p>A new ad for Cox. sort of… :-)</p>
<p><a href=“Tompaine.com”>Tompaine.com;