View Poll Results: Which scandel has the worst CEO?
Adelphi Communications - Founder John Rigas, his two sons and former assistant treasurer Michael Mulcahey are on trial in federal court, accused of stealing tens of millions of dollars from the cable television giant’s investors to support a lavish lifestyle.
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Credit Suisse - Frank Quattrone, the company’s former investment banking star, is scheduled to be retried in April on federal charges of obstruction of justice, after a trial last year ended in a hung jury. Quattrone made a fortune taking Internet companies public during the dot-com stock craze.
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Enron - Former chief executive Jeffrey Skilling pleaded innocent in February to fraud, conspiracy, insider trading and other federal counts related to the once-mighty energy giant’s collapse. Former chief financial officer Andrew Fastow has pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.
Health South - Fired CEO Richard Scrushy is scheduled for trial in August on federal charges of leading a multibillion-dollar scheme to overstate HealthSouth earnings to make it appear the company was meeting Wall Street forecasts.
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Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia - A federal jury convicted company founder Martha Stewart of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and making false statements related to a personal sale of ImClone Systems stock.
Qwest Communications - Four former executives — Thomas Hall, Bryan Treadway, Grant Graham and John Walker — are on trial in federal court, accused of plotting to help the company improperly book $34 million in revenue.
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Tyco - Former CEO L. Dennis Kozlowski and former CFO Mark Swartz are on trial for allegedly stealing $600 million from the company. The jury is expected to begin deliberations next week.
World Com - Former CEO Bernard Ebbers pleaded innocent Wednesday to federal fraud and conspiracy charges for allegedly directing a massive accounting fraud now estimated at $11 billion. Former CFO Scott Sullivan pleaded guilty a day earlier to conspiracy and securities fraud charges and agreed to testify against Ebbers.
[SARCASM] The capitalist scum shall be the first against the wall when the revolution comes! [/SARCASM]
Ahhh, your true colors revealed.
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BUSH WINS! 'I can't believe that some uneducated southern redneck's vote counts as much as mine'
— Anonymous Upper West Sider, 9/20/04."
What about just a general one for corporations who outsource labour to foreign sweatshops thus simultaneously exploiting people in other countries while putting workers in their own country out of a job and as such helping contribute to urban decay?
Oh, you mean, reacting to the market forces of supply and demand like businesmen are supposed to do? Cutting costs and trying to stay competitive, so that their companies aren't beaten in the market by other companies which do, thus resulting in ALL of their employees losing their jobs? THOSE guys?
You are trying to paint an overlay of normative morality on purely impartial economic processes. Fraud and embezzlement are to such measures as outsourcing as tax evasion is to tax avoidance: the former are illegal and improper, the latter are legal and in a purely business sense quite proper...
For the love of God, economics is anything but impartial - it's based on the value that money is important, and for these businessmen that it's the most important thing. Yes, they do need to make reasonable economic decisions, but the marginal benefits of these decisions frequently are outweighed by the negative externalities on the communities that they abandon. Of course you're talking to somebody who believes in internalizing the externalities and voting rights for stockholders that enable them to make real decisions on board members and things like that, so I may just be a commie pinko.
Also, just because it's legal doesn't mean it's right.
Enron and WorldCom about the same level IMHO in brazen corporate malfeasance. Quattrone wasn't a CEO, BTW - instead an overpaid, over-powerful deal-maker.
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"In theory, theory and practice are the same, but in practice, theory and practice are different."
Adelphia wasn't as large, but just as brazen, if not more.
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BUSH WINS! 'I can't believe that some uneducated southern redneck's vote counts as much as mine'
— Anonymous Upper West Sider, 9/20/04."
For the love of God, economics is anything but impartial - it's based on the value that money is important
No, not at all. You're confusing the science with one of the yardsticks it uses to measure economic effects. Money is a convenient proxy for such measurements as price or utility, but the fundamental principles of economics still apply even where it is not used, as in barter economies. In fact, it's been demonstrated that even animals such as chimpanzees and rats obey the basic laws of economics...
Economics itself does not treat what it calls normative questions, that is, what ought to be---only what is. ( Well, that's the ideal, anyway; economists, being human beings, still manage to have personal opinions and points of view which sometimes color their thinking. ) That's the job of politics. Economics tells us what happens when variables change; it's job is not to make policy recommendations about whether the variables should BE changed in order to obtain a given outcome.
Admittedly, its principles can be drafted by policy-makers in order to serve normative ends, but the science itself is no more about values than is sociology or anthropology or physics for that matter.
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the marginal benefits of these decisions frequently are outweighed by the negative externalities on the communities that they abandon.
I think if this were the basis of decision-making there would seldom be any progress. We'd still be riding in horse-drawn buggies because we couldn't have the "negative externalities" of putting buggy makers and horse breeders out of business, reducing the markets for hay farmers and employment for farriers, street cleaners, saddlers, etc. In fact the Industrial Revolution might well not have happened at all.
But the benefits of technological advancement and innovation is usually well worth the temporary displacements in the long run. There's bound to be turmoil as factors of production shift to their most efficient and highly valued uses, but the end result has always ( thus far ) been enhanced efficiency, greater average affluence and better lives...
Adelphia wasn't as large, but just as brazen, if not more.
Yes, sounds like they used Adelphia like a personal piggy bank.
Hey, as long as we're on this subject, how about George W. Bush's insider trading dumping $848,000 of Harken stock when he was CEO. In May 1990 he was head of audit committee so he knew how much trouble the company was in (banks were demanding equity to cover their loans), and an internal memo warned all directors that dumping stock would be illegal. In June he sold his stock without notifying the SEC (this is mandatory for a company officer like him); in August the quarterly report came out with over $20 million loss, and the company went from $4 to $2.57, and eventually flattened out at 22 cents. Nice job - he made out okay, even though the shareholders didn't.
Or, should we cross post this to the "resume" thread...
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"In theory, theory and practice are the same, but in practice, theory and practice are different."
The staff's investigation indicates that, at most, Bush was aware that Harken was forecasted to lose approximately $4.2 million in the second quarter. [The actual loss eventually turned out to be more than five times that] Harken's financial reporting was on about a 45-day delay, so that in mid-June the numbers reflecting Harken's actual results in April would be available. Consequently, by June 22 (the date when Bush sold) no actual revenue or loss information was available for the second two months of the quarter ended June 30. Bush, however, did see the Weekly Flash Report for the week ended May 31, 1990, which reflected a projected net loss for April of $1,875,00, a loss for May of $2,029,000, and a loss for June of $327,000 (for a total of $4,231,000)....Flash reports for the first two weeks of June, which would have been in existence prior to June 22, were only circulated to the members of the Harken executive committee (of which Bush was not a member).
On the question of whether Bush sold the stock deliberately to avoid losing money before bad news was made public, the SEC found that Bush made the sale after being contacted by a stockbroker who had an institutional client who wanted to buy a large block of Harken stock. When Bush decided to sell, he checked with Harken's in-house counsel, as well as the company's chairman, plus another director, and, finally, the company's outside counsel, to see whether there were any reasons the sale could not go through. No one raised any objections. "In light of the facts uncovered, it would be difficult to establish that, even assuming Bush possessed material nonpublic information, he acted with intent to defraud."
Apparently he also filed one of the two required forms with the SEC at the time of the sale, but, was very late in filing the second.
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BUSH WINS! 'I can't believe that some uneducated southern redneck's vote counts as much as mine'
— Anonymous Upper West Sider, 9/20/04."
Tireur, I'm not convinced. While I found text identical to yours at Nstional Review's site, there are plenty of other sites with other, and quite damning, material.
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"In theory, theory and practice are the same, but in practice, theory and practice are different."
I looked other sites up too, that one just said it best. I guess it's all on how each outlet decides to skew it. Which leads us back to where we started.
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BUSH WINS! 'I can't believe that some uneducated southern redneck's vote counts as much as mine'
— Anonymous Upper West Sider, 9/20/04."
Fair enough. I think it's worth a Whitewater-size investigation, don't you? A lot more smoke here (this is just a small portion); I think there's unethical and probably illegal activity. FWIW, I've often seen exaggeration and outright falsehood at NR; their opinions are worthless in my eyes.
Both of us are online too often!
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"In theory, theory and practice are the same, but in practice, theory and practice are different."
I wouldn't say no to an investigation. I think it would come up with the same outcome as Whitewater.........
I see the same as you do at NR, npr, cnn, fox, blah blah blah, they're all the same.
Yeah, work keeps me at this thing and I take breaks whenver I think I need them. Which is often...................
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BUSH WINS! 'I can't believe that some uneducated southern redneck's vote counts as much as mine'
— Anonymous Upper West Sider, 9/20/04."
Not to be the spoilsport here, but doesn't it strike anybody else that, while perhaps these CEOs are all quite deserving of it, this is at base an extremely malicious, cynical, and hate-filled thread? Just sort of leaves a bad taste in my mouth...
Not to be the spoilsport here, but doesn't it strike anybody else that, while perhaps these CEOs are all quite deserving of it, this is at base an extremely malicious, cynical, and hate-filled thread? Just sort of leaves a bad taste in my mouth...
Hate wasn't the influence for the post and I doubt for the threaded discussion that followed. Frustration, yes. Uncertainty, yes. News that distorts, politicians who are self-serving, and the irreconcilable greed on the part of our current business leaders, yes.
A comment was made earlier in this thread about the Adelphia brothers. They treated this public company like a private piggy bank, while bankrupting investors, employees, and retirees.
right...
A lot more smoke here (this is just a small portion); I think there's unethical and probably illegal activity. FWIW, I've often seen exaggeration and outright falsehood at NR; their opinions are worthless in my eyes.
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