Originally Posted By tiggertoo Question: Can Lay's institution STILL be forced to pay reparations to the thousands of Enron employees? How does jail time or even death help those who lost the life’s savings? The bulk of his fortune should be used to pay these employees. The last thing I want to see is Lay’s family prancing around in Rolls-Royces on money earned by criminal activity while the employees Lay swindled are on welfare. Justice indeed.
Originally Posted By smeeeko ^thank you tiggertoo.. personally I have nothing to gain from the Ken Lay/ Enron scandal.. I don't think ANYONE here is dancing around with glee. Yes I find it a little odd of the timing of his death.. someone who could have afforded the very best health care in the world.. Do I think he is dead.. sure.. do I think there will be people who will miss him?? Sure.. his family especially.. Someone who lives their lives thinking only of themselves and the money & riches and how to get more and more.. and forgetting the people who put you where you are today.. that's just wrong & criminal. He should have already been in prison, even if it was the Mens equivilant of the Martha Stewart prison for rich people.. Why he was allowed to leave the state while awaiting sentancing I don't know.. I think he died surrounded by the things he loved which is good for him.. I just think that the employees & their families that he ruined deserve better than what they were given.. Surely the liability is still there and the estate of Ken Lay can be sold off and distributed to the people who's retirement & pensions & lost jobs and homes & lifes etc he helped ruin?? Even in filing for bankruptcy the court is not so callous to leave the estate of a debter with no car or roof over the head of the estate. One car to go to work.. and one roof to live under... Some of us should be so fortunate!
Originally Posted By TALL Disney Guy <Yes I find it a little odd of the timing of his death.. someone who could have afforded the very best health care in the world..> Like RoadTrip said though, if it was a big enough heart attack, it could have been too quick or too severe to do *anything* about it.
Originally Posted By gadzuux They had a panel discussion about lay earlier tonight on jim lehrer newshour. By what they're saying, because of 'presumption of innocence', lay's "timely" death before sentencing means his record is wiped clean of the conviction, and the government has little if any recourse for seizure of assets. Not that it matters anyway, because both his assets and debts total approximately $9 million, which means they cancel each other out leaving about zero net worth after it's all sorted out. However, his wife and family are presumeably the beneficiaries of a rather royal life insurance claim of perhaps $10 million, which is not subject to any liens or seizure. So it's possible that he won't be missed all that much by his family. They were going to lose him to prison anyway, and this is much more lucrative for them.
Originally Posted By tiggertoo <<the estate of Ken Lay>> ESTATE!!! That’s the word I was looking for. I was racking brain for a while trying to find that word which seemed stuck to the tip of my tongue finally giving up settling on institution. Thanks smeeeko! You hit the nail square on the head in your post. <<…because of 'presumption of innocence', lay's "timely" death before sentencing means his record is wiped clean of the conviction, and the government has little if any recourse for seizure of assets.>> That doesn’t make sense because there is no presumption of innocence as he was found guilty in the criminal trial. Had he passed away before the verdict, I’d understand this contention, but all that was pending was the punishment for his crimes. Anyhow, if it is indeed true that Lay’s assets cannot be liquidated in some sort of postmortem sentencing, is there any civil suit that can be made on behalf of the Enron employees?
Originally Posted By Kennesaw Tom Yes I'm sure there are pending Civil Way suits but remember he bought the house in Texas. Texas doesn't allow anyone to take away someone home. So basically he dodged those law suits.
Originally Posted By fkurucz >> Not that it matters anyway, because both his assets and debts total approximately $9 million, which means they cancel each other out leaving about zero net worth after it's all sorted out.>> That sounds fishy. How can a CEO, who was probably paid tens of millions per year over many years, have an estate worth $0? Sure, his Enron stock is worth nothing, but he no doubt was also paid in cash. If he didn't diversify his holdings then hew was truly an idiot.
Originally Posted By smeeeko ^maybe the house in texas but not the ones in Aspen.. and the boats and the extra cars and.. All you really need is one house and one car.. anything else is fare game if they were really going to try and help recoup the losses of the employees and others that got ripped off.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip We all know that their was corporate fraud at the top, but when it comes to job loss people are acting like the collapse of Enron is the worst thing that ever happened to American workers. The layoffs at Enron are chump-change compared to layoffs in the U.S. Auto Industry. <<At the time, it was the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history, and it cost 4,000 employees their jobs>> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E nron</a> <<NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - General Motors Corp. said Monday it would cut 30,000 hourly jobs and close or scale back operations at about a dozen U.S. and Canadian locations in a bid to save $7 billion a year and halt huge losses in its core North American auto operations.>> <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2005/11/21/news/fortune500/gm_cuts/" target="_blank">http://money.cnn.com/2005/11/2 1/news/fortune500/gm_cuts/</a> <<NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - Ford Motor Co. said Monday it plans to close 14 manufacturing plants in North America and cut between 25,000 to 30,000 jobs by 2012 as it tries to stem losses and adjust to its new, significantly lower market share.>> <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2006/01/23/news/companies/ford_closings/index.htm?cnn=yes" target="_blank">http://money.cnn.com/2006/01/2 3/news/companies/ford_closings/index.htm?cnn=yes</a> I don't ever hear anyone feeling much sympathy for the plight of American auto workers. Of course that might mean you'd have to go out and buy an American car instead of a Toyota, and God knows you wouldn’t want to do that!! As for Enron's 4,000 layoffs... even Disney laid off that many people in 2001: <<April 25th, 2001) On Wednesday, March 27 The Walt Disney Company announced the largest layoff in the history of their organization. 4,000 jobs, approximately 3% of the Disney workforce, will be cut from every department throughout the company.>> <a href="http://www.providence.edu/polisci/students/disney/news.htm" target="_blank">http://www.providence.edu/poli sci/students/disney/news.htm</a>
Originally Posted By Kennesaw Tom The difference is that Enron lied to their employees and stockholders. Those Enron employees wouldn't have been layed off if Enron was legit. They weren't legit and doctored the books. Furthmore, Enron encouraged ( and I believe forced ) their employees to sink ALL their IRAs and investiments funds back into Enron stock. They those Enron employees got layed off and the company fell they lost everything! All their life savings, retirment savings, main source of income. When GM layed off and Disney layed off all those employees only lost their source of income. Any IRAs or retirement savings as well as stock savings were intact and safe.
Originally Posted By Kennesaw Tom OK Finally I have some time to sit down and answer RoadTrips comment sufficiently. I don't think anyone is questions any companys legal right to layoff employees. ALL company do layoffs. I think there are some vast differences between the layoffs at Enron and layoffs by companys elsewhere. Sure strickly speaking a lawoff is a layoff. But as I had previously stated Lay et all encouraged employees to invent ALL their life savings and investments into Enron stock. Lay went out of his way to encouraging employees to sink their money into Enron stock. I seem to remember at least one instance where Lay was told Enron stock would go down and he address all Enron employees and encouraged them to buy more stock. I also seem to remember that Enron imposed "30 day freezes" on employees selling of Enron stock. While Lay himself was selling his stock as the freeze did not apply to himself or upper management. Lay lied to his employees, stockholds as well as Wall Street. This created more than just a ripple on Wall Street. As a result of Enrons Wall Street actions the Federal Government now imposed strict laws concerning accounting of ALL companys that deal with Wall Street. I don't see this as a bad thing. I certainly prefer the Federal Governments involvement prior to an "honor system". Now all companys have heavy accounting hurdles in place when reporting losses and gains, ALL curtocy of Enron.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip <<The difference is that Enron lied to their employees and stockholders. Those Enron employees wouldn't have been layed off if Enron was legit. They weren't legit and doctored the books.>> Frankly, many of them wouldn't have had jobs in the first place if they books hadn't been doctored. A business typically doesn't go on a hiring spree if it is in financial hot water. Had the truth been know, many of those jobs would have never been created. <<They those Enron employees got layed off and the company fell they lost everything! All their life savings, retirment savings, main source of income.>> Anyone who puts all of their financial eggs in one basket deserves whatever comes their way.
Originally Posted By mele RT, it seems like you feel sorrier for Ken Lay than the millions of people his company ripped off. Wow, first voting for Bush and now this. Not only did people lose their savings, millions of people were overcharged for electricity. Remember the Enron guys who were joking about "Grandma Millie" who wouldn't have any power because she couldn't pay her high power bill? Did all of those people deserve what they got? <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/06/02/eveningnews/main620795.shtml" target="_blank">http://www.cbsnews.com/stories /2004/06/02/eveningnews/main620795.shtml</a>
Originally Posted By mele My Grandma lives in Snohomish County. <a href="http://www.snopud.com/about/CustomerNews/NewsReleases.ashx?3164_na=18602&p=1842" target="_blank">http://www.snopud.com/about/Cu stomerNews/NewsReleases.ashx?3164_na=18602&p=1842</a>
Originally Posted By leemac <<<<The difference is that Enron lied to their employees and stockholders. Those Enron employees wouldn't have been layed off if Enron was legit. They weren't legit and doctored the books.>> And it wasn't just Enron employees and stockholders that suffered. My firm employed double the number of people as Enron and disappeared virtually overnight.
Originally Posted By DAR I never thought I would agree with the NY Times but: in an editorial: "With (Lay's) folksy charm, the preacher's son who grew up poor in Missouri captivated the nation's attention in a way that Jeffrey Skilling ... who was Lay's co-defendant, never could. A boardroom Icarus, Lay made a spectacular fortune and befriended the president before his beloved company evaporated, taking the dreams and retirement accounts of workers and investors with it and utterly changing the way corporate books and decisions are scrutinized. An American symbol was extinguished in court; it was a man who died yesterday. Lay was fairly convicted of his crimes, but he was also a father and grandfather, whose family mourns his passing. He was headed for the penitentiary, but that did not have to be the end for him. He would have had an opportunity to use his personal skills to help other prisoners. And at 64 years, he might have had another shot at that third act after all. ... What Ken Lay might have done we will never know. Chances are it would have been interesting."
Originally Posted By RoadTrip <<RT, it seems like you feel sorrier for Ken Lay than the millions of people his company ripped off. Wow, first voting for Bush and now this.>> Absolutely not. I just don't think the whole Enron thing was any worse than many other things that have occurred in business before or since. I don't think much of Halliburton over-billing the government by billions of dollars, but no one seems to be getting very excited about that one. There are layoffs of more than 4,000 people all the time. Invertors loose their shirts all the time. People lose their pensions all the time... even when they work for companies that don’t declare bankruptcy. The company decides the pension plan is too expensive and that is the end of that... regardless of what had been promised. So... do I approve of what happened? Of course not. But it is NOTHING that hasn't happened before and doesn't continue to happen. Anyone who thinks otherwise just doesn't have their eyes open. The only differences are: 1) Enron was bigger. 2) Ken Lay got caught.
Originally Posted By Kennesaw Tom We are all going to wake up tomorrow morning and find out it was all the dream. Pam dreamt the whole thing.
