Enron

Accountability: What’s missing in America

Where did the money go? Enron, AIG, MCSi, IMF Global. All massive failures, where the shareholders, pensioners, and even government operations who hold investment portfolios with our tax dollars were left holding the bag. While a few may have gone to jail, the fact is that the people who were robbed, weren’t made whole. And Read More

While the government is talking limits on credit-default swaps, maybe we’d do best to ban “counter-investing”?

Investing and the market should be about good faith in a company- after all, isn’t that what all the debt rating agencies are supposed to help us with in making decisions? Just yesterday, Standard & Poors warned it may downgrade GM’s credit rating- which helped kill off 31% of the stocks value. That’s a serious Read More

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac aren’t the problem- they’re the symptoms.

There are two approaches to medicine in my humble opinion: one tries to prevent illness or fix what’s causing the symptoms, the other- treats the symptoms and could care less about the cause. Back aches are the best example- often, losing weight, proper shoes, changing mattresses and a lot of pilates/yoga will cure back problems- Read More

Why is gas $4 a gallon? You can partially blame Enron. The rest is on us.

I’m sure I’ll catch some flak for criticizing deregulation, however, somethings just do better with regulation. Banks are one. Bear Sterns proved that. Mortgage funds are another- Countrywide proved that. And, if you want to know why commodities trading needs regulation- well, Enron proved that. I highly recommend either reading, or listening to this entire Read More

Economic Stimulus the Esrati way

I’ve heard some crazy ideas about sending everyone a check to try to get the economy going. Unfortunately, that’s a short term salve with a hefty bill. A simple solution would require the banks (who’ve gotten us into this credit crunch in the first place) to take a bit of a spanking, but, with the Read More

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