AMosely

Finally! I was fearing another OJ verdict. Always great to see justice served. I don't think the punishment will come close to fitting the crime, but at least it's a guilty verdict.

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...NRON-TRIAL.xml

xTYBALTx

He'll spend the rest of his life in prison. What would you prefer?

I'm wary of anyone who takes the suffering of others so lightly.

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Current good song: Justice - Stress

Diceman

I wish I'd thought of such a concise way to put this sentiment, a long time ago. I don't know anything about Lay's punishment in particular and am not commenting on it here, but I feel that too often, calls for "justice" are motivated by vindictiveness.

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AMosely

I would prefer that he spend life in prison without privilidges or amenities. I was insinuating that I think he will not. We'll see.

leejo

I don't feel for these guys at all. If some dude steals $1000 from a liquor store he goes to jail for several years. These guys stole hundreds of millions of dollars and they ought to go to jail for a long time. A crook is a crook is a crook.

Also, this verdict makes me money.

TheFeniX

I'm not as worried about the money the stole as much as I am about the lives they destroyed in the process. Remember guys, these scumbags didn't just rip off money: they drove a lot of good people into the ground, destroying their livelyhood.

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Beatnik

Well said. And the number of their employees' IRAs/401ks that were totally wiped out by their 'creative accounting' is another huge factor in my pleasure over this.

It is vindictiveness, but these guys are a special kind of pond scum.

Actually, schadenfreude would be the perfect word to describe my feelings about this verdict.

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xTYBALTx

I agree 100% that the people in question committed crimes and are deserving of punishment. However, I do not buy the "destroyed lives" argument. The company failed because it wasn't making money, not because of the fraud. If anything, the fraud actually lengthened the amount of time Enron employees recieved compensation by keeping the business running longer. Had the management been transparant about Enron's financial situation, the company simply would have gone bankrupt several months earlier.

Additionally, all this talk about "stealing hundreds of millions of dollars" is hyperbolic. True, the management took large bonuses during the same time that they were cooking the books, but their compensation was not outrageous (in dollar terms. the fact that they were being compensated for fraudelent and non-existent profits is most certainly outrageous!). But the idea that these executives somehow drained the company for their own well being is simply incorrect. The executives hoped to cover up Enron's losses, make the company profitable again, and hope nobody ever noticed. That's fraud - not even the worst sort of fraud. It most certainly is not robbery. It is especially entertaining to note that had their scheme worked out, the employees at Enron would have kept their jobs and pensions.

If we're going to talk about the weighty issues of crime and punishment, lets at least be frank about it.

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Current good song: Justice - Stress

Beatnik

Yeah but it was their false reporting of their balance sheets that created the illusion of huge growth, which echoed throughout the industry. Many employees in these companies had a ton of their IRAs and 401ks tied up exclusively in their company's stock...a stupid move to not diversify, but with quarterly reports like that, I would've done the same.

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leejo

Arthur Anderson failed even though it was making plenty of money and wasn't actually responsibile for these schenanigans. The stock market dropped in response to Enron's restatements and caused lots of other people to get laid off.

These guys weren't cooking the books to hide the fact that they were losing money. They weren't really losing money were they? They cooked the books to inflate the stock price, and enjoyed the benefits of selling stocks they'd given themselves or purchased as cheap options at that elevated price. In this sense, they fraudulently sold lots of little old ladies retirement funds a bunch of plug nickles for $5 a piece.

They stole. Fraud is theft.

leejo

I try very hard not to get angry at certain criminals, but I do get pretty robotic in my thinking. For example, I saw on the news this morning that a couple beat and raped a woman over the course of two hours while videotaping her. She can be heard begging them and can be seen vomiting. Then they killed her.

I think of people like them like I would a broken HAL2000. Time to shut down those systems, and I'll do the job myself without wasting too much thought or heartache on the subject.

Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling don't deserve that treatment because they haven't committed that sort of crime. But they broke the rules and knew - or should have known - the penalties they risked facing in exchange for the extravagant lifestyle they stole for themselves, and now its time to pay the piper.

CingularDuality

That reminds me that I wanted to start a thread on a topic that I heard mentioned on the radio this morning. Thanks!

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xTYBALTx

What was that about justice?

Open Secrets [free article, no registration required], by bestselling business author Malcolm Gladwell.

Justice... Nifong style.

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Current good song: Justice - Stress

Tonk

bored are we? 1.5 years lol

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