Not hosta but may affect how many we buy!

As many of you know I do financial law for Uncle Sam at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and most recently I am working on the Enron situation from the commodities side of things.  Many of you have asked me questions about it and I ran across this item which I thought many of you might enjoy!


ENRON EXPLAINED

In case you were wondering how Enron came into so much trouble, here is
anexplanation reputedly given by a Texas A&M professor to explain it in
terms his students could understand.

Capitalism

You have two cows.
You sell one and buy a bull.
Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows.
You sell them and retire on the income.

Enron Capitalism

You have two cows.
You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of
credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity
swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back,
with a tax exemption for five cows. The milk-rights of the six cows are
transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island company secretly owned by
your CFO who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company.
The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on six
more.

Now do you see why a company with $62 billion in assets is declaring
bankruptcy?

Kevin P. Walek
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