I AM SICK OF HEARING ENRON SOB STORIES

teenyuck

The NBC news just showed the latest update on Enron. Ken Lay will show up...Yada Yada Yada.

The next clip dealt with a man and wife...he worked at Enron. Their financial planner told them to diversify and not put all their holdings into Enron stock. They did not listen and lost everything. His million dollar 401k is now worth $6500.00 The reporter asked why did you not listen to the financial planner?

"Well, they were so good to us, we wanted to support the company."

Bull....They were greedy.

I worked at Lucent Technologies when then became Lucent until 1999. I bought company stock at 15% less than the OTC price. I put my whole 401k in the Lucent Stock fund. The stock went up everyday. We had coffee klatches about the stock and how high it would go. People would sit at lunch and break determining when they would retire, based upon the price of Lucent stock.

When I left the company to move to Ohio, in mid 1999, the stock was in the $60's...all the shares I had purchased to that date, I purchased in the teens, twenties and thirties. My 401k was more balanced with the price of stock...every month, stock was purchased at the discount rate and put into your 401k. Not bad....

While I watched the stock price climb to $82.00 a share in February 2000, I was very happy...lots of money to be made! Then the stock started to drop. And drop. And drop. Today the closing price is $5.75 a share. I personally lost my 401k and about $15,000 in stock purchases.

Where was the government when the most highly touted company of the late 1990's was dicking around with their books?! No where.

What relief is the government (and all you taxpayers) giving Lucent employees who put all of their 401 savings into the Lucent stock fund? No where. Thousands of Lucent employees are destitute for retirement due to this...just like Enron.

We were greedy...just as the Enron employees were. We thought that the company would keep growing. And the stock would continue to go up in price. The bottom line is that we were stupid and greedy.

Does the company hold some responsibility for this? Maybe...but they did not twist our arms to put our money in the Lucent stock fund 401k, nor did they twist my arm or the arms of all the other employees who purchased stock. We got greedy.

It all comes down to responsibility. I take responsibility for my stupid action. Rather than selling the stock when it was in the $70-80 range, I wanted more. Pity me. [8>]

That is what I see with Enron employees. Similar situation. No one forced them. The Enron employee above saying that he put his whole 401k into the company as a show of support is in denial. He was greedy. Just like many, many of my friends and colleages at Lucent Technologies.

mikepence

Enron allegedly deliberately mislead their employees and investors, while paying off politicians, including our moron-n-chief.

Go read Salon.com for a while before you go projecting your stupidity on these poor Enron folks.

We all project our own faults onto others...I am doing it now. :-)

Mike

teenyuck

Do you think the Lucent board and CEO were not doing the same thing? We had an employee from my office whose job it was to lobby and make political contributions. Rich FuckHead McGinn, the CEO until last year, when he was FINALLY fired, did nothing but talk up Lucent and it's stock to the employees. We had many video conferences with old Rich. He was very persuasive. But he did not force me to put all my holdings in one company. Neither did Ken Fuckhead Lay.

Lucent did not file bankruptcy...only difference...they talked about it. They sold off numerous profitable companies, fired and layed off thousands and no one questioned the "Pro Forma" accounting that got their records FUXXD Up.

Bottom line, I feel for those employees, however, they are no differnt from people I know. They are responsible for their actions and the taxpayers of the good ole USA should not pay them for being greedy. If that happens, I am putting in for a class action suit on behalf of myself and about 20 people who live within blocks of me...all former Lucent employees. They all got fired. Last year Columbus Ohio had approximately 7500 Lucent employees. It now has approximately 800...about 1500 former employees are in the building, but with a new company who bought the Lucent facility..Celestica.

ballistic

The company I work for lost 2% of it's wealth to enron, but hey, 2 % of 40 Bn is not worth what it used to be.

teenyuck

Thanks ballistic...I forgot the fallout factor.....

Since Lucent was the most widely held stock, many, many money market plans were affected. Finding a money market that does not invest in companies like Enron and Lucent is difficult.

All those other people were affected by Lucent's screw up...

JT

puff your post sounds much like a jw who went to college and got a good job and is telling a jw who didn't go to college that it is his fault

while i agree with you 100% no investor should put all his eggs in his baskets, but when the:

Elder, CO, DO , Bethelites,GB, talks, meetings, publications= Aurthur Andersen, CEO, all published reports of balance sheets, etc is saying all is WELL

i think to simply say: "It's the rank and file JW/Enron persons fault leaves out some very key points

but we are all entitled to our views

james

Amazing

Hi Puffs: I agree with your post and the intent of your argument, with one exception:

I don't not consider investment, even in one company fund to be greedy. To me greed is when we seek gain, extrodinary gain at the expense of another, to the harm of another.

Capitalism is healthy and of itself is not greedy, but some people are greedy, no doubt. These Enron employees took a risk, and di not hedge or diversify ... so I would tend to agree far more with your view that they were stupid. Excellent post.

teenyuck

Thanks Amazing. You are correct. We were not trying to hurt anyone with the rising stock price. We were trying to get wealthy without working for it...old materialism (and stupidity) raises its ugly head! We knowingly took the risk however. I am relatively young...I can make up what I lost...many of the people I worked with were 20-30 year employees. They really were the ones hurt. Same at Enron, employees whose companies were bought up are screwed.

JT..my analogy with Lucent and Enron is not quite the same as someone going to college...I lost. I only lost a relatively small sum because I was a short term employee. There were thousands of former AT&T employees who became Lucent employees. Lucent was doing much better than AT&T then. The long term, "lifers" were really hurt. I live within spitting distance of 5 Lucent engineers. All of them said they lost all of their 401k holdings. All of them are in their 50's and 60's. Listening them tow the company line, still is awful..They think Lucent is going to recover and go back to its glory days. I do not see it. Same old guard is in power.

Because Lucent did not file bankruptcy, they fell off the radar of the regulators. However, Lucent had massive real estate and technology holdings that they sold. That is the only reason they did not go under.

ProForma accounting was to blame at both companies. They misreported earnings. Plain and simple. Enron did not have the ability to sell off holdings to satisfy the accounting screw up.

This is an issue with the government and why regulators want to change accounting practices. Enron blew the lid off of an ugly accounting practice.

JT

my wife use to work for AA back in the 80's in the DC office

and they used to laugh at how they would do both the "Consulting" side and teh "Audit" side for the same firm

they used to call it DOUBLE BILLING-

AT THE time they were the Big 8 accout firms-and i recall her often making the point that when AA signed AA on that annual report and other reports their signature was as good as Gold

banks, investors and employees could look to the balance sheet and say AA looked over it and it has a clean bill of health-

they created a hollow shell of a company and to tell some employee that he should just shut up and go sit down to me is over simplifing a major problem that the avg joe blow doesn't understand-

many folks have commented on how they wish that they knew MORE INSIDE INFO on the org and how it perhaps would have affected how and when they left

but so many avg jw simply have no idea as to what goes on behind the curtain- damn most nonjw have no idea - they merely see the image that we as jw created HAPPY FOLKS TALKING ABOUT THE BIBLE ON SAT

WHILE most of us wanted to be at the beach- i recall as a kid being ask on sat am with a suit and tie in 100 degrre weather did i want to be out there and i said yes AND MOST JW WOOULD RESPOND THE SAME WAY IF a NONJW asked them-

Enron to me is a another example of how when an org can control the FLOW OF INFO about itself it can maintain it's respect for a long time

Julie

I am wondering though if there are truly as many parallels between the two and I ask out of admitted ignorance? Was Lucent as misleading as Enron had been? Did Lucent hide the sort of debt that Enron did? Did Lucent have the long-term, high powered connections that Enron did? What's the scoop here?

Besides the reactions/circumstances of the employees (everybody got screwed except the biggest players) what are the parallels of the demise of both of these companies?

Curious to know the full story--
Julie

I AM SICK OF HEARING ENRON SOB STORIES

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