Robert Seeberger wrote:
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "vze3xykq" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Wednesday, July 10, 2002 6:41 PM
> Subject: Re: Religion and ethics
> > Again, you didn't see many frowns when a ten dollar stock goes up to
> > ninety. But that does not mean the employees had to purchase one
> > single share, does it?
>
> I think its the sheer volume of dishonesty that irks so many people.
> When you buy a stock you know you are taking on some risk, but people who
> bought Enron stock were more or less set up to take a loss.
>
> I kind of take it for granted that you non-Houstonians are aware of the
> incredibly humongously gigantic balls sported by Enron management.
> There are instances of them setting up a more or less fake company,
> attracting investors, putting in a couple of thousand dollars of their own,
> a week later profiting 100K or so, dumping some Enron debt on the fake
> company, and washing their hands of it. Why Anderson ever allowed this is
> beyond me, unless they were in on the schemes.
Well, Anderson is getting its due, I think.
Most of the financial advisors were recommending for people to buy
Enron, if they were making any recommendations. One financial advising
company recommended selling, gave reasons, and a few people listened.
(This is what my father-in-law told me over the weekend, anyway, as we
were driving either to or from the old house to get the last of the
stuff dealt with. He had Enron, listened, and got out before he lost
money on it.)
What really gets me is that the employees were kept in the dark about
the whole thing. I've been married to someone with a substantial
ownership in a company and saw what he went through to make sure his
employees were taken care of, one way or another, sometimes at the
expense of his own household. He felt responsibility for the people who
worked for him. He'd have felt that responsibility more, not less, if
it had been 500 people there instead of the 40 or so they had at the
peak of employment. I don't understand how these execs who cashed out
can live with themselves, how they can sleep at night. (I guess that
gets back to the whole ethics thing, and they don't have enough.)
> > And unfortunatly 'options' are the way to go. How many Microsoft
> > millionares are there, people who got stock at >dollar and were able
> > to sell it later for 50 to 100 times that? Other companies see that,
> > and the employees, and want the same thing.
>
> I think this is the driving force behind all the corruption that has showed
> up lately. It makes me think that there needs to be some sort of barrier
> between investors and management, though I dont expect that to be a popular
> idea.
For a publicly traded company, yes. For any other sort, that's just not
going to work. A small company that is a corporation probably has most
of its stock owned by the people who founded it and who are making it
work day-to-day, so the investors *are* management. But once you're
publicly traded, you're subject to a whole bigger set of rules, and
adding something like what you suggest for the publicly traded companies
might be a good thing.
> > Hey it sucks for me too. My money is all in one basket and has lost almost
> > half of it's value, and I don't have the money now to buy, to dollar cost
> > average my losses. But I'm not looking to get rich quick either. I'll be
> > glad (and lucky) to get a 6% gain this year. We have 6 years of 22% gains
> > and people start thinking it's forever.
> >
> The company I work for is owned by Tyco. Tyco is in much the same situation
> as Enron or Worldcom.
Damn. I'm sorry.
> xponent
> Bastards Maru
> rob
Where's Bob the Dinosaur? There are a *lot* of people he ought to be
sent out to give Twirling Wedgies to in this whole mess....
Oh, and the words "rotting" and "hell" come to mind, as well.
Julia
