What prevented industry giants like Bechtel and Fluor from getting a shot at the bidding process? Bechtel is already in Iraq and Fluor is one of the largest infrastructure companies in the entire world. Either of these industrial giants could fart out an operational petroleum refinery complex in their sleep and not even have to wash their drawers afterwards.
So don’t hand me this horseradish about how, “Halliburton is the major player in oil services infrastructure. Who else should they have chosen for this?”
This is flat out cronyism, pure and simple. If Cheny holds (even trust-bound) stock options in Halliburton, that company’s enhanced business prospects increases the value of the stock held in it and thereby directly contributes to the potential wealth of Cheny.
For the third time his interest is hedged out. He neither gets poor if the stock goes down nor richer if the stock goes up.
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Yup. So?
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Don’t put words in my mouth. I have no problem with questioning them. I have a problem with morons that draw conclusions from this paucity of facts.
Well you see, there’s all these other countries and company and such that would really like to no exactly what we are doing and thinking so they can take advantage of the fact.
Because I want to know, as does the GOA, as should we all want to know how our government is being run.
For the second time, how is hedging removing your interest in the future of the company?
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I didn’t put words in your mouth. I quoted you directly. The conclusion I’m drawing is that Cheney is hiding something. Because he is. He’s hiding if from the GOA and the public. What he is hiding is what I can’t figure out because of the paucity of the facts.
No, but I like my government much more transparent then I want a card game to be.
Ya know, Scylla, maybe Cheny is under no legal obligation whatsoever to reveal one whit of what went on behind closed doors. How about ethical obligations?
All I can say is that right after these negotiations went down, one of the biggest commercial failures in America’s history tapped out the retirement and stock accounts of countless thousands of Americans, to the tune of millions and millions of dollars. I fully understand that these two events may have no connection in the least.
The average Joe is still entitled to be extremely curious about whatever closed-door sessions went on in the White House with these scoundrels. Any politician with even a single lonely still-firing-and-soon-to-be-excreted neuron knows that full disclosure is one of the only ways to disspell any air of suspicion in the matter.
Cheny et al have done the exact opposite. Certainly, it is the electorate’s privelige to not vote for this elite crew of liars and cheats the next time around. Yet, there still remains the issue of personal enrichment while in office and other possible tort offenses that cannot be resolved merely by voting.
The American people are being treated to a revolting spectacle of secretive government a la star chamber that has no place in our political system. I believe it was John Jay that said:
“Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”
This quote is one that Shrub’s Flying Monkey Gang™ should take deeply to heart. Instead, they are, to a man, wiping their asses with it. After all is said and done, I do not think that history shall judge them over kindly.
SNL did a bit after the first gulf war. It was a press conference. Reproters would ask the Generals “What piece of information would we want most not to fall into the enemy’s hands?”
No Ma’am. You did not. You took three words out of context and placed them in front of your own construed phrase.
No you do not read well. We have provided you a Cite that says the opposite:
In case you missed it. Your opinion has been rejected by the Congressional Research Service. Fact: as a matter of federal ethics laws he still has a continuing financial interest in the Company which recieved a closed door billion dollar no-bid contract.
As they say in law school, when the law is on your side, pound on the law, if the facts are on your side, pound on the facts, if neither are on your side- pound on the table. Your arguments are nothing more then table pounding. I expected more out of you.
As far as the intentionally ironic crack about innuendo based attacks- please show me the cite where you complained about the Whitewater and Hillary investment based attacks as unfairly innuendo based. :dubious:
This aint my area of expertise by any stretch of the imagination so maybe I should stay out of this but I’m confused. The Congressional Research Service may count Cheney’s comp checks as continuing financial interests in Halliburton but AFAIK that is only in the broadest sense of the definition. IOW he is regarded as having continuing financial interests in the company but only because he still takes money from them.
Scylla’s point seems to be that the amount of money he gets is fixed and as such he has no incentive to do special favours for the Halliburton Group.
One of the many things I’m not sure of is how Cheney was able to fix it so that his compensation checks were independant of the company’s stock options.
Can someone open a few cans of whoopass on my ignorance here?
He purchases an opposing option (presumably a put), one where the profitability of the option moves in the opposite direction of the original option relative to changes in stick price (e.g., if a stock increase makes the first option more valuable, it reduces the the value of the second). This is typically structured in a way that it algebraically guarantees a specific return, no more, no less, and the holder accepts the fact that he has conceded a potentially much-higher return for the guarantee that the investment will never be a loser. It also effectively makes the company’s stock price a matter of complete financial indifference to the holder of the option/hedge.
I’m not familiar with all the details of Cheney’s deal, but that’s how a hedge typically works.
How? This is not a rhetorical question. The Congressional Research Service says different. Can someone dispell my suspicions on this? I mean real ignorance iradication.
So you are equating the public interest to the enemy in this analogy? The GOA is The White House Task Force on Energy’s enemy?
Here they are in context:
Here is either a whole thread filled with issues that need to be addressed or, as Scylla has described it --here comes some another on of those out-of-context quotes that somehow obscures the real meaning of Scylla’s words–“disingenuous little whine[s].”
Scylla is wrong when he says Cheney hedged out on the options. Cheney hedged himself out on the deferred compensation, not on the options.
Cheney is saying he has no financial stake tied to the unexercised options because he’s agreed to donate the aftertax profits from the eventual exercise of those options to charity.
I know how hegding works in general. My question is how is Cheney’s portfolio hedged so that his interest in the future of Halliburton is null? Once source says he has no money ties to the future of Halliburton and another that says he does.
Anyways, that primer on options should keep many busy for, I dunno, whole seconds before they scratch their heads and ask “Can I buy a sell and sell it before I buy any stock?”
More correctly, he says he has dontated the options to a charitable trust which has a trustee (presumably not him) who has the power to dispose of them.
That would require a change in the way most employee options work (i.e. employee options are not themselves marketable), so I have to imagine that he worked that out with Halliburton the same way Rubin did with his (then-private) interest in Goldman.