Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2001 16:30:55 +1000
Subject: Empire at home - lack of translucence or " Cooking the Books".


Dear All,

Kenneth Lay, top dawg at Enron, could not explain a note in Enron's
financial statements when interviewed last August.  "You're in way over my
head"..

Yesterday Enron sold for 61 cents a share, compared with a peak of  90
dollars per share in August, 2000.

The magnitude of debts, and lack of profits was successfully concealed by
creative accounting or was it dis-accounting?

This made the investment banks who supported Enron stock look stupid after
the fact, but maybe they were just riding the wave.  If the corporation had
been a bank, it would most likely have been "too big to fail".

We gullible taxpayers would have bailed it out with our wage deducts, as was
the case with Continental of Illinois and other large banks, within the past
several years.

Before that we rescued  the Savings and Loan community, whose shenanigans
were public knowledge.  Congress studiously avoided a resolution until
G.Bush
the 1st came to power.  He took action and got Congress to approve a bailout
which was estimated to cost taxpayers $500 billion..

regards,
Hugh