>>So do I. What Enron, (and Microsoft) represents isn't capitalism or the American way, unless robber barrons represent the American Way.
>
>Hopefully the outcome of this will result in some new regulation. Then investor confidence will return.
>
>Charlie

I'm not too hopeful. McCain put forward legistaltion a while back which would have forced corps to account for stock options payments to employees as expenses on the the ledger. The 'Conscience' of the Senate, Joseph Liberman, led the charge against McCain proposal and defeated it. It makes the noise currently coming out of Liberman's mount especially obnoxious. Entron wouldn't have been able to copy Microsoft's accounting practices because it would have been illegal for Micrsoft to do what they have been doing for most of the last decade: paying employees with stock options and not including them on the expense ledger. In fact, they get a tax break from Uncle Sam for every stock option they issue, so you and I are paying for Microsoft's programmers and CEOs. The MS Board issues new stocks every so often and they are printed up on the Xerox machine in the back office. Thanks to Liberman and Uncle Sam it gives Microsoft the right to print money, money which accounts for a large chunck of their $40B cash reserve. If those kind of accounting tricks are illegal for Enron, why are they ok for Microsoft, who first used them and is the accounting poster child for all the other 'illegal' corporations?

The DOJ has not only abandon the enforcement of Sherman-Clayton act, they have joined with the convict against the States! Add to that the fact that the illegal monoply terms of OEM license agreements are continuing as if the trial never took place, illegally preventing a free market on the desktop, and combine it with Sen Hollings and others, guided by MS lobbiests and 'campgaign donations', trying to get legislation passed that would require the MS patented DRM technology on all computers and digital devices. That would hand ownership of computers and the internet over to MS. Think life is expensive now, pary that scenerio never occurs.