I don't feel bad for Lay's victims

What does that make me?

eom

I wonder if the OP feels anything for the folks who died in the heat when Lay's people cut the power off. Ah, prolly not.

Or a utility ratepayer in any deregulated State.

Because if you are paying for your own utilities, you are a victim of Kenny-Boy.

Just who the Hell do you think shoved dereg thru Reagan's (and GHWB's)admin?

eom

are a person with no stock investments nor dependence on a future pension from an employer.
Perhaps you are self-employed, or independently wealthy (in terms of $, if not compassion.)
Just a guess, since you asked.

I have been on disability for 17 years, I shouldn't even be here right now....but here i am!!!

and get a job. /snark

If you don't feel bad for me, well, that tells me either you don't know who his victims were, or you don't care. Having to chose between food and electricity (to heat or cool), having to chose between food and medicine because your retirement fund disappeared, these are tough choices many people had to make because of Lay. Many people were his victims, not just rich stock market investors.

got royally screwed by Enron without the benefit of at least dinner and a movie first.

I hope those pieces of shit get everything that they deserve. They ruined so many lives with their greed.

and get back to you.

Was she working for Enron? I am confused...did people in Cali lose their savings too?

it became worthless when the company imploded.

to put most of her savings in one stock holding?

You have since become millionaires on the settlement with the brokerage company haven't you?

I've never heard of a compliance department which would have approved that order. If there was a company with such lax oversite, you should call their compliance department, and you have a very good chance of getting back all your losses plus through the arbitration hearing. The broker bears the responsibility of doing his due diligence to make sure he's providing suitable investments for his clients, and large stock holdings for octogenerians would be obviously unsuitable.

real estate. I have never trusted the stock market and so I have bought up a fair amount of land & houses and skipped investing in the market so I'm a tyro in that department. I have never until now heard of the compliance issues you mention and would wager my mom hasn't either...she got into the 'game', as it were, as a hobby about 20 years ago and gradually moved most of her assets into the issues that I have to assume were suggested by her broker...she mentioned his name a few times but I chose not to involve myself in her business dealings and don't know the specifics - I'm pretty sure it was someone with Schwab. I may have overstated the loss to a degree, she is far from destitute but I do know it was around $125,000, a not inconsiderable sum. I don't personally have a dog in this hunt...mom is a pretty independent woman and I have more than enough assets to last me for the rest of my life (I have no progeny so that's not a consideration) but I appreciate your comments and will definitely have a look into the situation. Thanks.
KS

on edit: sorry to be so late replying, I had to make a quick trip to Dallas this evening, just got back. :-)

Thanks to Enron's traders who created artificial shortages to jack up the prices while joking about fucking over "Grandma Millie". Small business went out of business because they couldn't pay the bills, while hospitals and manufacturing facilities were asked to put their emergency generators online to help keep the grid up. You think those things don't cost a boatload of money to run?

Ken Lay screwed everybody, not just the few hooked to his get rich quick coattails.

called compassionate conservatism?

:shrug:

a Republican?

nt

I worked for a company that had nothing to do with Enron, but I lost $200,000 in my own 401K plan because of Enron, Worldcom and that other huge company that did basically the same thing. I can't blame the people who invested our 401K money because, at the time, if they hadn't invested in these companies, we would have all been saying why not. Kenny Boy and his ilk affected a whole lot of people.

but it doesn't fill the savings account back up.

That might give us a clue as to why you say this. Thanks.

and saw that it was down to a penny after being close to a million. Those victims.

Many more of us are victims.

eom

people who might have been millionaires? Not sure what you are getting at here.

I sure don't. They were playing with fire and got burned.

but not for the rest of Lay's victims, those (and me) I still feel sorry for.

And I'm familiar with being screwed by Enron from a couple different perpsectives--one, I live in California and saw my utility rates skyrocket thanks to their criminal acts.

Two, one of my best friends worked for Enron for years, and was financially wiped out because of what Lay did. His 401k is worthless. That's not "playing with fire," Roon--that's called working your ass off and trying to save your money for retirement. To get completely fucked by your company in that regard is devastating, both financially AND emotionally.

I pity you that you seem so immune to compassion for the countless people harmed by Lay's and Skilling's greed.

and you'll get an empathy lesson.
Like the lineman who climbed up telephone poles for over twenty years while his life savings climbed to over $300,000.00. He was told repeatedly that he was doing the best he could for his retirement -- told by "the smartest guys in the room".
Then, his account was frozen. He got out with $1200.00.
Oh, you should also listen to the Enron traders, giggling, while talking about "making granny take it up the a.."
Nice stuff.

I also thought they were prohibited from selling them in the period before the company went "belly up"

people who have 90 % of their portfolios in one stock holding. It seems incredible to me that some people won't learn lessons.

And that's my diplomatic assessment.

You don't want to hear the unfiltered version.

I am waiting to see if Roon comes back later to check in.

Reminder, if you will not be able to be on and reply now, please let know in your posting.

OK, I deserved to get flamed. I will answer some but not all...thanks for posting! :wave:

I'm not interested in keeping you busy.

Enron collapsed. I was almost sued by a client whose Enron holdings became worthless. Months before it happened I sent a letter recommending that the position be entirely liquidated and stating several reasons why I was concenrned about the holding. What saved me was that there was a written response refusing to liquidate any of the holdings. Why? Greed. This particular person lost a rather substantial sum despite being cautiioned well in advance that there was significant potential for exposure. Hard to feel sorry for all of the victims. Some were well aware of the risk. And I think that is also true of many company employees who had reason to suspect things were not necessarily what they appeared to be. Not to say there were not innocent victims, of course....

a lot, if not all of the people who "lost everything" were victims of their own greed.

d-i-v-e-r-s-i-f-y

Thanks!!

long-term investment opportunity. Perhaps "greed" is a component in this case but to the degree it is, that would apply to ALL investment which is of course legalized gambling but a lot of people simply want a reasonable expectation of financial security with gains exceeding what can be achieved from, say, a savings account.

if you don't diversify your investments- you're either greedy, a fool, or a greedy fool.

and the brokers may well have been hyping Enron stock. But a fundamental analysis of the financial reports showed some disturbing trends. Many of the financial ratios (e.g., leverage) did cause concern among professional institutional investors (CFA chartered professionals whose compensation and continued employment is typically tied to investment performance - not commissioned sales brokers). Before August 2001 all of the 20 different CFA chartered professionals I worked with had independently chosen to liquidate all of their Enron holdings. At that time no one had a clue about the fraudulent off balance sheet financing.

Professional investors typically are selling stocks that are being hyped not buying them. They typically make their money by buying stocks before they start to go up in value. Then they sell them off incrementally to realize their gains. Too many other folks buy the stock after it starts its upswing. At that point most institutional investors will forgo any additional acquisition of the stock. Buying it will tend to bring down overall investment performance because a portion of the gain was realized prior to purchase. It is simply better to look for another stock that has not yet begun its upswing.

Those who were hyping Enron were hyping it as a growth stock. Growth investments tend to be more speculative. Higher risk - higher reward. Virtually all financial research on equity performance has shown that the best long term investment comes from a buy and hold value strategy. Why? Because you buy something that is low in price in relation to its expected earnings and you hold on to it for several years without incurring trading costs. Growth stocks on the other hand are meant to be bought and traded with some frequency. They typically serve the interests of brokers in earning a commission. And growth stocks usually have a buzz of some sort so you may pay a premium to acquire them. Growth investment strategies are greed driven and predisposed to high trading volume. Not so with the value stocks. Nobody wants them which makes them attractive if you really do think they have good earnings potential.

Just because someone working on commission is hyping something he is selling it does not make it so. Neither does general public perception. Buyer beware. If it sounds too good to be true it probably is. Doing well in the market has a lot to do with managing information. It is not guaranteed but you can certainly improve your chances if you have access to information and the ability to filter it for multiple criteria. That ability is largely reserved to the institutional investors.

stock.

Also at some point Enron froze all 401K accounts so that employees were not able to move any money out of Enron stock.

http://www.reason.com/0204/co.ml.political.shtml
http://www.pensions-r-us.org/latest_news/enron_robs.htm

"Nothing in the Kennedy or Press quotes about Enron's 401(k) plan is accurate. It's not true that 11,000 employees were invested exclusively in Enron stock, and those who were chose that option. They certainly weren't forbidden to diversify. And they all still have a retirement plan, since 401(k) plans live on after companies die. Bush is right: Nobody should be forced to risk losing everything if the company he works for crashes. And nobody was.

Enron maintained a rather typical 401(k) plan for a company of its size. It offered 20 investment options, its own stock being one. It matched 50 percent of employee contributions-up to 6 percent of a salary-with Enron stock. Workers couldn't sell shares their employer gave them until they turned 50, a common restriction for gifted stock. They were not prohibited from selling stock they purchased. At the end of 2000, 62 percent of the value of employee 401(k) accounts was held in Enron stock. (This is risky but not unique. Procter & Gamble's fund is 95 percent company stock, Abbott Laboratories' is 90 percent, Pfizer's is 86 percent, and Coca-Cola's is 82 percent.)

In early 2001 Enron decided to contract out its 401(k) administration to an outside company. The transfer required a freezing of accounts, which took place over 11 trading days, from October 29 through November 12. Enron's stock was at $13.81 when it froze the accounts. By the time 401(k) investors could sell again, the stock was at $9.98.

Notice that the stock didn't "sink suddenly," as Press claims, from $83 to 26 cents. It experienced a long, well-deserved slide over a period of many months. The restrictions on selling the gifted Enron stock didn't apply to Padgett, Quinlan, or Thibaut, except for the 11-day freeze. "My children told me I should diversify," Thibaut told Fortune. "But all the mutual funds were going down, and I just kept going up."

no sympathy from me for greedy fools.

While I don't agree with the conclusion of the writer of the 1st article I quoted, I linked to it to prove my point that the matching contribution made by Enron to employees' 401K's was in Enron stock which employees were not able to sell until the age of 50.

Try reading the other link (above) as well as these:

http://www.gp.org/articles/derosa_03_02_02.shtml

http://www.dukeemployees.com/cash102.shtml

Additionally, Wall Street was in collusion with Enron to conceal the true financial picture of the company. Enron executives used the leverage of the investment banking business they would steer toward Wall Street firms in return for a favorable analysis of their stock.


http://www.jonentine.com/ethical_edge/2003_09_hear_no_evil.htm

Confusing rules on pension and 401K plans, Wall Street analysts colluding with Enron to deceive the public about Enron's financial status, and people still have nothing but contempt for the working stiff?

con men couldn't exist if not for people's greed. the enron employees had other choices besides enron stock in their 401k- but a lot of them were dazzled by fast talk, and sucked in by their own GREED. they gambled, they lost.

"con men couldn't exist if not for people's greed." It appears that you are saying that it is the fault of those greedy employees that Ken Lay ran the scam he did. Like I said, blame the victim.

Ken Lay was enabled by his ultra-wealthy, greedy friends on Wall Street, by other greedy executives at Enron like Andy Fastow and Jeff Skilling, by his power-crazed buddies in the Bush administration who opened the door to speculative trading in the California energy market.

Why are you so eager to blame employees who had NO idea of the corruption in the corporate offices?

Fast-forward to January 2001. The George W. Bush administration, within 72 hours of his inauguration, issued an executive order lifting the Clinton Energy Department's effective ban on speculative trading in the California power market. The state was still in crisis, facing blackouts and 300 percent increases in power bills, the result of "deregulating" its electric system, as first suggested by Lay.

Instead of a "free" market, California's electricity bidding system became a fixed casino where Lay's operatives and a tight-knit cabal of corporate cronies jacked up prices through such tricks as "death star," "ricochet" and "kilowatt laundering."

In one instance, Enron "sold" the state 500 megawatts of electricity to go over a 15-megawatt line. Enron knew that sending that much power through those wires would have burned them to a crisp. To prevent this Enron-designed blackout, the state scrambled for other sources of electricity, which Enron and friends sold them at a big mark-up.

http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=507&row=0

and people who don't diversify their investments due to their lust for riches, are ultimately victims of their own greed.

"Oh that person is too pure of heart, it would be unethical to bullshit him out of his belongings."
They will lie, make stuff up, fabricate documents, whatever it takes to fool you, whether or not you are greedy.

Example: Al Franken was conned by Colin Powell into supporting the Iraq war.
Franken said he was convinced by Powell's UN presentation.
Powell's UN presentation was just a big con, and Franken fell for it.
So did a lot of people. Was it because they were greedy? No.
A lot of people were conned into supporting the war for good reasons,
they were conned into believing that Saddam had WMD, they were conned into thinking that the Iraqi people would be better off without Saddam's oppression, they were conned into thinking that the US would provide the resources necessary for reconstruction.

If you think con men avoid people who aren't greedy, you may have already been conned without knowing it. You may have given money to a good cause, and still believe that your money actually went to the good cause instead of into the con mans pocket.

it's as simple as that. if people weren't greedy, con men would have a much tougher time taking down a mark. or lots of marks.

Especially someone as big as Enron was.

Playing the stocks would be the first red flag for me.

the employees weren't ALLOWED to trade their Enron stock.

Thanks!

You lack ethics and are hard-pressed to feel empathy for your fellow humans. Lots of people lost their life savings. How could you NOT feel something for them?

:shrug:

of others....

ok

Some people can't feel anything.

lives were devastated, savings vanished.

(can't believe I'm gracing this thread with a reply)

nt

by more than a few people. I don't know where that comes from.

Conservatism and obtuseness seem to go hand in hand.

eom

:)

Now that really hurts!!

http://www.happinessonline.org/InfectiousGreed/p20.htm

"There are a few things you need to understand about our § 401(k) plan to understand the impact of Enron’s collapse. First, we are free to make various kinds of investments with our own contributions, but the plan prohibits any employee under age 50 from trading the company’s contributions. In other words, the company puts in its own stock, and until we reach age 50, we hold that stock. Second, until very recently, even after age 50, we could only trade 25% of the company’s contributions per year. Third, I said before that the company is committed to contributing stock equal in value to our cash contributions. The company’s practice, however, has been to purchase blocks of stock at the beginning of the year, which it then uses to match our contributions over the course of the year. In making those contributions, Enron uses the cost of the stock when it purchased it, not the value when it makes the contributions. In good years, this certainly has been advantageous. But over the course of the last year, our employer has been contributing stock worth a fraction of the contribution it is supposed to be matching.

Finally, as you all well know, we were all barred from trading our stock during a critical period this last fall. It seems strange to me that as soon as the really bad news came out on Enron, we found ourselves unable to move out of the stock. Enron suddenly changed account managers, and our investment accounts were "locked down." I have seen that Enron says we were only locked out of our accounts for ten trading days – from October 29 through November 12. But as early as September 26, my coworkers were finding that they could get access to their accounts, but they could not conduct any transactions. As the truth about Enron started to come to light – and as the officers at the top cashed out – we, the employees, had no choice but to ride the stock into the ground."

These people weren't "millionaires," and they weren't "playing with fire." They were hardworking employees who got completely screwed over by their company. I know; one of my best friends worked there, and he still hasn't recovered completely.

perhaps it would be smart to post a big reply doing so for those who are not reading the whole thread to find it. CLARIFICATION HERE sort of thing, or are you enjoying all this?

but someone assured that I was going to flee this thread. I was just picking brains.

Perhaps "why should I care, please inform me"

like going to vegas.

..ripping off the elderly.

"...all the money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers of California."

"Yeah, Grandma Millie, man. But she's the one who couldn't figure out how to (expletive) vote on the butterfly ballot."

"Yeah, now she wants her (expletive) money back for all the power you've charged right up - jammed right up her (expletive) for (expletive) $250 a megawatt hour."

Laughter follows.

If these asswipe lost everything then they deserve it (but somehow I think they came out ahead).

But the rank and file employees of Enron did not deserve it. The secretaries, the logistics people, the support people, the maintenance people and all others who were not part and partial with the crimes did not deserve to have their lives ruined.

Nevertheless, I live in California and I resent the way Enron gamed the deregulated market at the expense of me and my neighbors. We are Enron's victims.

I don't own Enron stock and didn't think deregulation was that good of an idea. I didn't make a paper million just to lose it. All I got was a tripled utility bill.

I resent the way Enron traders mocked the suffering of California rate payers with derision toward "Grandma Millie." And Jeff Skilling joke about California being different from the Titanic because "When the Titanic went down, the lights were on" is another point on which I am getting a real sense of Schadenfruede<[br />/i] over this conviction.

just a guess

I won't be the only one or the last one. I have skin as thick as a rhino's. I chat with freepers in yahoo all day. Majority of the people in here couldn't handle that.

I get like that sometimes.

Great post!

read the rest of the thread for it. thanks.

A corporate leech?

I give up.

My mom lost a substantial amount of retirement money
in a mutual fund that invested heavily in Enron.

If you live in California or use goods and services
from California, you're probably paying for Enron
every day.

:D

--deleted message--

:hi: :D

Nice to see you still staying awake - it's really tempting to forget all this sometimes.

Hope you're well! :) :hi:

eom

That's acceptable. What is that German word where you enjoy the failings or misery of others? That is what I am guilty of....so sue me..LOL

now that was funny

but I can think of a better word.

They bought up many companies that had defined benefit pension plans, raided those plans, and converted them into 401-k's ..

There were a lot of people who had no choice but to go along for the ride.. Imagine yourself as a 30 years-on-the-job, 49 or 50 yr old employee of a power company that was bought by enron.. Do you quit your job? Nope ...you grit your teeth and stay put (remember enron was a darling, until their horns suddenly popped up as they emploded.. ) Their inflated stock values gave their employees and the employees they kept "buying", in line and thinking that they futures were still secure...When their pension money was "converted", they were ripe for the picking... Many had already retired and with loss of medical benefits, AND any income that could purchase private insurance, probably a lot of them just died.

The Reagan Age ushered in corporate raiders, and glorified them..they are little more than sharks who are always looking for a fast meal..

Thanks!

It also makes me wonder why you would think it is alright to defraud and steal peoples money, which they did.

I've had enough! :-)

and it too was because i had enough. funny that.

this ain't datalounge flames and freaks so shit stirring ain't so amusing. i like to keep my drama queens on a tight rein, and i ain't about to bother with their little games here.
:) :hi:

What did the victims do (or not do)?

who thought it was all real? Or the fact Kenny made the Bush energy policy in 2001?

That hurt anyone?

:bounce:

Many innocent lives were shattered, retirements accounts evaporated, marriages ended, kids forced to drop out of college. Sorry you don't find that relevant.

He hid the thread.

Classic signs of a shit disturber.

So hooray to you. The concept made you feel special enough to post a thread on, so I guess it makes special.

man a lot of regular people lost their retirement savings that were in Enron stock, a lot of them were employees of Enron, but many were not.

how could you not feel bad for people who have been devastated by financial loss?

maybe your disability is from a head injury and you've damaged your "feeling" areas of the brain.

I would say that makes you an ass.

Devoid of empathy?

What's the term I'm trying to think of?...ummm...err...Oh, I got it. "Republican".