From: Charles Hixson (charleshixsn@earthlink.net)
Date: Sun Sep 08 2002 - 15:39:26 MDT
On Saturday 07 September 2002 12:47, Technotranscendence wrote:
> On Saturday, September 07, 2002 2:13 PM Charles Hixson
>
> charleshixsn@earthlink.net wrote:
> ...
> Where is the evidence of coercion? Indirect coercion, maybe -- that's
> what fraud is. However, I don't recall any evidence of Ken Lay or the
> others holding a gun to someone's head and telling them to purchase
> shares of Enron.
The people I was thinking of when I mentioned coercion were the employees of,
e.g., Enron who were "encouraged" to invest in the company while their bosses
were stripping the treasury, and selling what investments they had. It's
pretty hard to tell the person who signs your paycheck that you won't invest
in the company you work for. Sufficiently so that in my books it counts as
coercion.
>
> > into these investments. And
> > they have no current recourse. Is it your position that
> > we should trust the government to handle things
> > properly? Perhaps we should, but that's because
> > it's the only choice available.
>
> Look, you're hoisting yourself on the horns of a dilemma here. You
> don't trust the government to go after fraud, but you do trust it to
> what? My solution is that fraud should be gone after, but the much more
It's a disgusting problem, but I didn't create it, I'm merely describing it.
Dilemma? I suspect that there are more than two horns here.
> important thing is not to increase government power. Let some investors
> get burned. Heck, I lost money too. I'll live and I'll learn. But
> increasing government power here will most likely only create more
> Enrons. (Most people seem to forget that the US government throughout
There are powers and powers, in the first place. In the second place,
however, I'm forced to agree with you. Regulatory agencies always become
captives of the groups that they regulate. I just don't see what the answer
is when the organizations are some much more weighty (as in, able to afford
lawyers, purchase judges, suborn juries, etc. [mind you, I suspect that they
generally do all of these things in a legal manner. But they wrote the
laws]).
> the 1990s bailed out investors left and right -- in the S&L Crisis,
> Mexico, East Asia, Russia, and LTCM. This sets up the expectation that
> investments should be no risk but all reward -- and investors never
> learn to be cautious, skeptical, and to develop tools to weed out the
> Enrons from the Intels.)
>
> >> No exactly true. First, the government did not prove
> >> wrong doing before the arrests. Since these guys
> >> are not likely to flee and also not
> >
> > ??? Evidence for this? I know of many cases in the
> > past where (on a lesser scope) people who have
> > comitted similar crimes have then fled the country,
> > taking their profits with them.
>
> Do you seriously think that today with the global reach of the US DoJ
> that Ken Lay and his buddies would be untouched anywhere on the planet?
Yes. The DOJ only goes after those people that it chooses to go after. If
the accused have sufficiently good political connections, and can afford to
continue buying support for a few months, then they will be ignored.
>
> >> violent criminals, the arrests and parading before
> >> the media was purely a political stunt aimed at
> >> giving the masses circuses when no bread is
> >> forthcoming.
> >
> > Causing people to loose their homes and jobs.
> > Purely a stunt, yeah!
>
> It remains, again, to be proved if that's what they did. Would you like
> if, say, you were arrested and paraded before the news cameras because
> your company went belly up?
>
> Come on, you know the reason they were arrested had little to do with
> the nature of their crime and much more to do with making the
> government -- a government which commits fraud on a much greater level;
> what about the missing $1.7 trillion at the Pentagon? -- look like it's
> doing something and that every idiot with some spare change can start
> plowing it back into the NASDAQ like it's 1999 all over again.
In one way, I agree. Due process is necessary. But wealthy people deserve no
more consideration than the poor. NONE! NONE! If police customarily treat
poor people in a certain way, then wealthy people should be treated exactly
the same way. But due process is only available for the wealthy. Yes, it
should be available for everyone. But it isn't. So I find it ...
distasteful... when someone shouts that these wealthy people aren't being
given due process. I could walk down to any jail (with a good lawyer at my
side!) and find a raft of people who were being denied due process.
P.S.: Poor in this context is anyone who can't afford to have a quality
personal lawyer, or can't afford to pay out $200,000 for an appeal after the
goverment has siezed all of their accessible property. (That's siezable at
the time of arrest if someone asserts [not proves!, but merely asserts] that
the crime involves either racketeering or drugs. And win or loose, don't
count on getting it back, ever.)
>
> ...
> The separation of commercial from investment banking in American via the
> the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 was more of a feud between the Morgans
> and the Rockefellers with the Morgans losing. The Rockefeller banking
> interests were hurt too, but not as much." I cited this article in
> November of last year and August of this year. This should shatter the
> myth that I'm somehow pro-big business. No, I guess it won't because
> people assume I am.)
People assume that you are in favor of large businesses because you defend
them, and you don't defend the smaller businesses. Smaller businesses are
treated by the government as second class citizens (as opposed to the
citizenry, who are treated as servents). But smaller businesses are more
willing to treat individual persons as individuals because 1) they can and 2)
the balance of power is more nearly equal. Governments, however, prefer
larger businesses, because it causes there to be fewer individuals that the
need to deal with.
...
> Well, if the Media were interested more in going after politicians in
> general rather than staying in favor with the Dick Cheneys of the world,
> things might be different.
I haven't figured out a reasonable response to the political standard
action... If the candidate that you want is repulsive, assist the opposition
in choosing someone even worse to run against him.
...
You asked "Did we ever disagree?" I was probably being nitpicky.
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