McCaining Business - ALL THE VIEWS THAT MISFITS PRINT!

McCaining Business
ALL THE VIEWS THAT MISFITS PRINT!
by Ted Lang

July 11, 2002

Columnist Ted Lang Paul Krugman is an economist that has written a zillion books on economics. And Mr. Krugman writes a column for that prestigious anti-capitalist, pro-socialist propaganda mill, The New York Times. And Mr. Krugman uses his high caliber credentials to teach us low intellects the finer points of accounting; to wit: "This front buys some of the firm's assets at unrealistically high prices, creating a phantom profit that inflates the stock price, allowing executives to cash in their stock." [Emphasis added].

Do I understand Mr. Krugman correctly? You spend money, and that creates a profit for you? Even if you understood only 1% of what I tried to explain in the three-part article I wrote on accounting last week, you'd be a genius contemplating such pea-brained mush from a Democrat party hack! This is journalism? This is "all the news that's fit to print?"

That statement is idiotic, even if way out of context, which it's not! And "phantom profit" is what allows executives to sell stocks? But in case you misunderstood what Krugman was ranting about, he repeats himself in his "Succeeding in Business" op-ed piece the Times ran Monday, July 8th: "That's exactly what happened at Harken [where Bush was a former director]. A group of insiders, using money borrowed from Harken itself, paid an exorbitant price for a Harken subsidiary, Aloha Petroleum. That created a $10 million phantom profit, which hid three-quarters of the company's losses in 1989."

Do you understand this? What I guess he means is that the investment acquired at a bloated price artificially inflated Harken's net worth as a result of the gain from the sale of assets by the subsidiary, and not the purchase transaction. But wouldn't that serve to reduce an asset or increase a liability on the balance sheet also? How could the transaction appear as a profit when that must be presented on Harken's income statement? This was neither a revenue nor an income transaction. Harken is of course the Bush wrongdoing equivalent to that of Hillary, McAuliffe and Martha.

What's happening here is that Krugman is a die-hard Democrat. He could care less if his Democrat president raped a woman, or blew up a factory killing innocent people, or slaughtered 81 religious freaks in some backwards cowboy state resulting in some mid-west office building getting blown up - he's a Democrat! Therefore, all Democrats are good and all Republicans are bad. He desperately needs to hang something, anything, on Bush. How sad!

I don't like Bush either and I voted for him! But considering the left-wing policies he's initiated, policies that would never have gotten past Congressional Republicans had they been orchestrated by Clinton, his failure to honor his oath of office as well as knifing conservatives in the back has invoked my outrage and contempt for him and his Clintonesque intrigue.

I don't care if a wrongdoer or an evildoer is a Democrat or a Republican for precisely the same reason I wouldn't care about the political party affiliation of an armed robber, rapist or murderer. That's what makes me a free man! I'm not limited to judging what's right or wrong based upon moral relevancy, political correctness, or party affiliation. I'm not limited in either intelligence or judgment as is the case with Mr. Krugman, who by the way, took $50,000 from Enron for consulting. [Maybe he does pest control on the side?]

And if Bush and capitalism haven't been caned enough by the Marxist Times, then lookout, because here comes that horrid, nasty, little troll: It's a nerd, it's a pain, no, it's Senator Johnny McCain! Now after the Times got its pet economic dog to lift its leg to Bush and capitalism on exactly the same day and in the very same editorial section, that Bush and America-hating imitation Republican and nasty, little troll was allowed his vitriolic rant as well.

Heeeeeere's Johnny: "In a string of corporate failures and scandals from Enron to WorldCom, we have seen the first principles of free markets - transparency and trust - fall victim to corporate opportunists exploiting a climate of lax regulation." Huh? Lax regulation? The regulations have never been lax - it has always been the enforcement of regulations that's been lax! And what American organization has been more lax than the Congress in which Senator McCain serves? Wasn't it the Congress that permitted conflict of interest management consulting and auditing to be performed by accounting firms against the expert advice of former SEC Chairman Arthur Leavitt?

"During the 1990s Congress repeatedly squashed attempts to tighten the rules on auditors," states the editorial in The Washington Post Online dated Sunday, January 27, 2002. It continues: "Sen. Joe Liebermann (D-CT), who chairs the Senate committee that held Enron hearings on Thursday, fought in 1994 against proper accounting for stock options. Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-LA), the chair of Thursday's House hearings on Enron, opposed a plan to bolster auditors' independence from managers in 2000. Sen. Chris Dodd (also D-CT), who now proposes reformist legislation, led a battle in 1995 to limit auditors' liability. These and other members of Congress would like you to forget this, or perhaps to believe it was an honest error; 'we were wrong,' Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.) declared on Thursday, in a show of graciousness."

Where was Little Johnny when all this went down? McCain continues: "…in the current climate only a restoration of the system of checks and balances that once protected the American investor - and that has seriously deteriorated over the past 10 years - can restore the confidence that makes financial markets work." What a load of…. What makes financial markets work so well is the absence of government meddlers and buffoons like him! And the stock market fiasco of 1929 was caused by government, in spite of the lies to the contrary consistently advocated by the capitalist-hating Marxist Times.

How sad are the rants of these desperate socialists! Time for a change in the Times motto. It should read: All the views that misfits print. ***

Photo of Columnist Ted Lang courtesy of the author