It takes the American SEC to actually charge the folks behind Enron North. Investors got tired of waiting for the Ontario Securities Commission to do anything. Another reason for having a single national regulator.And Nortel has been a bigger loss for more seniors and retiree investors than the Income Trusts.
SEC files charges against former Nortel execs
The securities regulator alleges the execs at the Toronto-based telecom maker repeatedly engaged in accounting fraud "to bridge gaps between Nortel's true performance, its internal targets and Wall Street expectations." "Each of the defendants betrayed Nortel's investors and their misconduct gave rise to billions of dollars in shareholder losses," said Linda Thomsen, director of the SEC's Division of Enforcement.
In the go go world of a long bull market like we have seen, the only house rule for casino capitalism is that rules are meant to be broken. The wave of criminal fraud cases that have hit the market are a result of the politics of Greed that we saw in the eighties and before that in the seventies and early sixties.
Gekko: Greed - you mark my words - will save Teldar, and that other malfunctioning corporation, the U.S.A.
During bull markets the movers and shakers of real existing capitalism, not the Von Mises /Hayek fiction, find accomplices like Accounting firms to do their bidding, which is to hide money away from the government, and also to make as much money as quickly as possible. Both of these ends then require a means, which is fraud, pure and simple.
The use of back dated shares, accounting practices to pump up market prices, accounting practices to avoid taxes, hedged bets on mutual funds after closing, these are all business as usual until they are declared fraudulent by those who are supposed to be regulating the market.
It is the political dominance of finance in the marketplace.
Nortel is not Canada's only criminal capitalist on trial in the U.S.
Establishment-watchers eagerly await Black's trial
See
Nortel Slash & Burn
NORTEL: REDUX
NORTEL: Canada's Enron
Dalai Canuck
Criminal Capitalism
We Need a Living Wage
The Phoney Debate On Net Neutrality
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From what I learned in class today, we can blame this all on A.P. Taylor and his American import idea of "I'm not in business to make anything but money" mentality.
ReplyDeleteI'm reading about him now. The more I read about him, the more I don't like him.
Do you mean the historian A.J.P. Taylor who is famous for blaming the onerous post WWI tribute demanded by France and the allies on Germany for the rise of Hitler and Fascism?
ReplyDeleteI think it was actually E.P. Taylor?
ReplyDelete