Build Date: Sat Feb 22 14:50:48 2025 UTC
Fear is the enemy and anarchy is our supply line!
-- Mr. Bad
Boil Them in Oil
2002-05-29 02:19:59
Yesterday, Dynergy, a large energy company that is in many ways very similar to Enron, announced that it had inflated its revenue streams some 4.5 BILLION dollars through various trading shenanigans - mostly reverse trades.
Reserve trades occur when one company buys goods from another and then immediately trades them back. The two trades cancel each other out and no money or goods actually changes hands. Both companies' assets are exactly as they were prior to the first transaction, but each company gets to book the trade - so it appears that both companies have a MUCH higher trading volume then actually exists.
This is a completely disingenuous act and the intent is nothing less then to mislead and defraud the investors. And there is no doubt in my mind that the executives of the corporations that commit these acts should be hauled off to jail. But they aren't. They never are. The CEO of Dynergy resigned - probably with several hundred million dollars worth of ill-gotten booty in his bank account. And while the SEC might investigate, if history is any guide, it won't even bother filing charges in this case.
And that just sucks.
Here in California we have a "three strikes are you are out" law. On your third felony conviction you get life. So if you are some poor, deranged street bum with two strikes and you stumble drunk into some Stop and Rob liquor store and quaff a 40 without paying, you can be sentenced for shoplifting and spend the rest of your life in prison for drinking a can of malt liquor.
However, if you are some high flying corporate executive with a fleet of New York attorneys and a bank account filled with cash from all the stock options you managed to sell after jacking up the price with all your swindling trades before anyone else figured out how you cooked the books by some billion or so dollars, you get to buy a nice ranch, staffed with a troop of servants and escorts, and "ride the pine" during the next Republican sponsored round of fraud and get rich quick schemes. But that's ok... because that round will create a whole new batch of crooks with unpunished "crimes" that dwarf yours and make you look damn near innocent.
Quite frankly, I'm just fed up with all this corporate corruption and I want to start boiling some of these bastards in oil.
T O P S T O R I E S
The Future Ain't What It Used To Be
Ideas have taken horrifying shape and rooted into our modern reality. (More...)
The Once & Future King of Dust
Only The Onion could have acquired Infowarts. (More...)
Another Nobel Prize-Winning Author Describes Drunkenness
This book won a Pulitzer Prize. Here's its famous paragraph on getting drunk... (More...)
Why I'm pretty sure JD Vance had sex with a couch
True or false? The answers await us in that magical land where all truths are revealed -- the internet. (More...)
In 2010 Dr. Cheng-Huai Ruan discovered a way to cause a patient with an abnormal heartbeat to get back into a normal rhythm by sticking a finger up the patient's ass. (More...)
WKRP in Cincinnati aired from 1978 through 1982. Howard Hesseman played Dr. Johnny Fever, a DJ from Los Angeles who was fired from his previous job for saying the word "booger" on the air. In the show Hesseman would do some dialogue, introduce a song, and start the song. You'd hear a few notes, but never the whole song. (More...)
C L A S S I C P I G D O G
Songs Of Love And Special Things
Well, dear reader, there's no denying it: Spring has sprung. The air is pungent with the fertile aroma of Romance. And you know what goes with Romance, don't you? That's right, Lover, porn. And not just any porn, but the kind you can sing along to. (More...)
Poor Metallica. All they want is to continue to put out the same weak "Heavy Metal" they've been churning out since the "And Justice For All" days? and make gooey wads of cash in the process. The problem is, people aren't buying their bound for the heavy metal scrap heap, over-produced, uninspired, tired crap. And let's face it, their various commercial endorsements won't pay for the lifestyle they've become comfortably accustomed to. Resorting to lawsuits makes perfect sense, when you need spending money. But just one lawsuit isn't going to pay their bills. So, to aid Metallica, I've composed an open letter to the boys in the band, with suggestions as to whom else they might sic their lapdog lawyers on... (More...)
Johnnie Royale's Guide to Wakes
Wakes can present problems for Bad People of the Future. (If you don't know what a BPotF is, you need to read more of the PDJ.) Sure, your friend is gone and you miss him and that really sucks; it does, I know. But all Bad People of the Future are gonna die, and they have all accepted that fact. They do deserve, however, to have one final kickass party to celebrate all the bad things they've done in the past, present and future. And you, as a friend, have to make sure that their desire for a final send off is well executed (sorry for the pun). That's just the way of BPotFdom. (More...)
Patient Joab's scientifick editorial discusses aspect of the space-time-beer continuum never before processed by sub-bush-robot minds!!! Too fabulantastic to contempulate! (More...)
All this talk about death, wakes and Moloch recently has, frankly, got me a little worried. What if I'm next to go? I could slip on a wet banana peel and slam my head against an enormous brass statue at almost any time. I'm not planning well enough for this sort of thing. Who will talk for me when this terrible day comes? (More...)
The Ancient and Correct Sake Ceremony
Many Americans have learned to appreciate the delicate, sophisticated flavors of Japanese food and drink, along with the beautifully refined rituals of Japanese dining. San Francisco, as a gateway between East and West, has especially benefited from the flowering of Eastern consciousness in America. It is hardly possible to walk down the street without stepping on somebody's sushi. (More...)
