I've been following the Enron debacle closely, but I haven't posted anything here because, well, it's hard to discuss something when you don't have access to 99.9% of the real information. The whole Enron thing is one stinking pile of hidden facts.

Apparently, some of the facts are going to stay hidden.

Philadelphia Inquirer story here

Investigative journalism was made for stories like this. I pray that we've still got a couple of journalists who are up to the task.

FWIW, my bets are that Enron is going to be Bush's achilles heel. Every president has at least one, yes? DH heard on NPR that top Enron executives were part of the energy policy advisory group that the White House didn't want to disclose early on in the presidency. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find a source to post a link here, so, there's not much to disucss there either, not until there are some facts.

Facts. How much do you think we'll ever know?



Andrea

There are hundreds of Cayman Islands accounts. I say this is economic terrorism. Bomb them back to the stone age...

This quote from an AP story:

Quote:Chicago-based Andersen said its company policy "required in certain circumstances the destruction of certain types of documents."

I'm translating "certain types of" as "incriminating" and "in certain circumstances" as "when the feces hit the rotating, bladed, ventilaton device."

-JP

This may have already been covered elsewhere because I admit that I haven't been following the Enron stuff that closely, but the thing that bothers me the most - much more than the shredding of documents although I agree that is a Bad Thing™ - is the blowing up of the employee pension plan.

Apparently they funded the pension plan with company stock. I found this out last night when a friend came online extremely upset because she found out her father-in-law lost every penny of his $500K total pension. That to me is the worst.

Sorry for veering a bit off and for the interruption if this is something everyone else already knew, but it really burns me that the pension was so tied to the company. Pension funds should be escrowed and sacrosanct.

Janice

Yes, they should be, but unfortunately, many company plans let the company decide the parameters.

Ah, yes. I remember being ordered to set up systems to automatically delete records for (Company X) or occasionally attempt to retrieve records and then being asked later to eliminate them. Of course, the response was "Well, what do I do about the stuff I want to save" and I'd say to store it locally. Sure enough, single-instance storage became multiple-instance storage and the same server and workstations all filled up that much more rapidly with these space-saving measures in place.

(Easily-circumvented technology is no replacement for well-enforced policy and business practice... repeat...)

Some reasons not to destroy records:
- Historical information is critical or required by law
- They have value as an asset
- If you have a "destroy all records X days old" it makes it a little harder to plan events X+1 or more days into the future, or carry forward plans for an event that happens every n+x days.

Some of the good reasons to eliminate records:
- Space/storage considerations... people are packrats and will overwhelm cheaped-out servers.
- Old information may get mistaken for updated information
- The data that is retained and not deleted anyway may lead an observer to the wrong conclusions

Some of the evil reasons to eliminate records:
- Dodge subpoenas through an otherwise badly-implemented policy
- Cover up wrongdoings/mistakes
- Prevent employees from walking out with information and handing it to competition
- If you store them badly, you can blame the storage facility for failure to maintain your records and not get blamed for covering up "bad" data

Quote:Originally posted by pluckyduck
DH heard on NPR that top Enron executives were part of the energy policy advisory group that the White House didn't want to disclose early on in the presidency. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find a source to post a link here, so, there's not much to disucss there either, not until there are some facts.

I haven't seen anything saying they were actually members of the group itself -- but did read this, which said they had met with the group -- also something the White House had previously refused to disclose:

... For months before Enron sought shelter from its creditors, criticism of Enron's influence on the administration's energy policy -- particularly Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force -- was percolating.

The General Accounting Office has asked the administration to list the task force's contacts with energy lobbyists. The administration steadfastly refused until last week, when Cheney's office sent a letter listing six contacts between Enron officials and the task force.

Bennett dismissed the implication that Enron had unduly influenced the Cheney task force, which insisted it met with dozens of representatives from throughout the energy field...[more attempts at damage control] ...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...172029.DTL

Enron has lots of ties to Bush but they also gave a fair chunk of change to quite a few Democrats who might like to see the whole mess quietly disappear. But I doubt that it will.

Money, power, secret meetings, shredded documents.... man, I gotta get working on the screenplay.

After reading a bit more on the whole Enron scandal, I figured out what bothers me the most about the D.C. connections. Perhaps the connections were illegal or allowed safeguards to fail--I'll let the lawyers figure that one out. However, it disturbs me that the very consultants, board members, and executives that were part of Enron and its collossal failure are the very people who are advising Bush on how to run the U.S. economy.

This simply seems to fall under the category "not very bright." At least, I wouldn't expect them to do better with the U.S. economy than they did with a single company.

Business Week has a huge special report. I haven't had time to read it yet, but I thought I'd pass the link along. Looks like lots of meat.

Andrea

One of my colleagues is an expert on hedging, futures and options. He told me they borrowed money to speculate and guessed wrong. I suggested he write Hedging for Dummies. The Enron version would be Dummies for Hedging.

Enron auditor refuses to testify before Congressional committee. Surprise.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/busines...778602.stm