Okay, by now, everyone knows Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling were found guilty on most of the charges.
I am more interested in a trivia question:
Who was the analyst that questioned Enron’s books, and was called an "Asshole" by Jeff Skilling in an open analyst meeting?
The answer is below in clear type — highlight the space beneath to see who it was:
"The analyst called an "Asshole" by Jeff Skilling was Richard Grubman, of Highfields Capital. (he’s the "good" Grubman)"
Good times . . .
>
UPDATE May 25, 2006 2:54pm
Dealbreaker catches CNBC in a case of spontaneous combustion:
Impending Enron Verdict Slays Everyone At CNBC
An area man witnessed the death of the entire cast of CNBC’s late morning
program shortly after it was announced the Enron jury verdict would come in at
noon."They got really excited. And then more excited. And then they sort of just
exploded," a witness said. Others were unlear exactly what happened."I watch with the volume down. I thought maybe there was an attack or
something."As it turns out, the announcement near 11 am EST that the Enron verdict would
be declared at noon proved absolutely lethal to the staff of the business news
program."The buildup really was too much," a medical specialist said.
Spontaneous combustion is rare among television news program staff members
but not entirely unheard of.
Too funny . . .
>
Sources:
Unacceptable Corporate and Market (NASDAQ) Behavior
Wednesday, July 27, 2005 http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2005/07/unacceptable_co.html
Jeff Skilling’s spectacular career
Mike Tolson and Katherine Feser
Houston Chronicle, June 20, 2004, 10:44AM
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/special/enron/2404018.html
The United States of Enron
Robert Bryce
Counterpunch, February 15, 2006
http://www.robertbryce.com/021506cpunchUSofEnron.htm
Enron’s Lay, Skilling found guilty
Former Enron Corp. chiefs Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling were convicted Thursday of conspiracy to
anyone have a link to the part of the conf call transcript where grubman asks his question? i’d love to read that.
I was watching too. It was hilarious. You would have thought that Monica Lewinsky had been found to be traveling with Bill Clinton in a limo or something.
Breathless …. absolutely freakin’ lutely breathless.
If you rent “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room” you can hear the tape of the conference call. Did any one else see the film? What I want to know is where the tape recordings of the traders came from. Who made them?
Reinhard
It was good that Lay and Skilling were convicted, but the convictions do absolutely nothing to help the thousands of investors defrauded out of billions of dollars, including the many who lost their life savings.
And the problem is not unique to Enron. How about WorldCom, Global Crossing, Bre-X? The list of corporate frauds where investors lost everything goes on and on.
In my opinion, this is one of the fundamental flaws of our legal system: the system will send all the people you want to jail in order to make you feel better, but it provides no effective mechanism to compensate the millions of people for all the losses they suffered at the hands of these fraud-feasors.
And the problem will become progressively worse as the system of command and control, for which criminalization provides the most onerous penalties, becomes more and more the predominant mechanism for regulating coporate conduct.
There needs to be a way to harness the genius of these people, which defrauded investors of billions, to see that the people get their billions paid back.
Re breathless, I had a good laugh earlier this week, with the emerging market meltdown in progress, when a breathless Sharon Epperson (sp?) talked about markets “from Mumbai to Bombay”.
why should they get their money back? They’re investors. Investors take on risks. If any investor thinks for one second that companies cannot be fraudulent, they shouldn’t be in the stock market.
What are you saying, if a stock does well keep the money but if it doesn’t someone should reimburse you? Don’t be an idiot.