Bush's Enron Letters

stockula said:

So? Did Bush know about his crimes? Did he pardon or help out the Enron crowd when their crimes were revealed? If your friend is a mass murderer, but you don't know it, are you somehow implicated?

More criminal, I think, are the money center banks like JP Morgan and Citibank who knew full well what Enron was doing, but abetted their crimes and lent them money and accepted their fucked-up earnings reports as solid in order to keep their incredibly lucrative investment banking business that Enron steered towards them.

There's an interesting chart of the market's volatility when the extent of abetting big, crucial banks like Citi and JP Morgan with the Enron frauds was revealed in late July, 2002. Let me find it............

Here, I hope this works.

http://stockcharts.com/def/servlet/SC.web?c=$VIX,uu[h,a]wacayyay[df][pb50!b200][vc60][iUb14!La12,26,9]&pref=G

This chart shows the market's volatility, which is used to calculate the price of stock options on the S&P 500. They're like insurance contracts on stock prices. The peaks describe fear and uncertainty so high premiums are demanded, the troughs apathy and a sleepy, confident market where risks are perceived as low, and premiums are accordingly priced.

You can see a big spike on the left hand of the screen. That was 9/11, the greatest spike since the crash of 1987. Look to the next, even greater spike. That was when Citi's and JP Morgan's complicity with Enron's crimes was disclosed to the market. There was more fear in the market from that news than terrorists destroying the WTC, because the market asked "If these people were in on it, and they handle finance and banking for thousands of other firms, how many other "Enrons" are out there?" These greedy bastards could have wrecked the entire financial industry of the United States. That was one of the few days I really felt panic in the market, not because I was losing money (I went long on gold stock options), but because I was scared the system might fail and the economy ruined.

So comparing Bush's chummy relationship with the CEO with outright criminal conspiracy (Which Citi and JP Morgan legally shielded themselves from since they knew full well the worthlessness of these partnership schemes Enron ran), I kind of look at those letters between Bush and Lay and say "BFD".

souljacker said:
Nonresponsive. Move to strike, your honor.