Turns out that lovable president GW Bush himself appears to have played some financial shenanigans regarding stock he held in an oil company back in the days when he was just a lush and not a politician. Harkens Energy bought a money losing company called Spectrum 7–GWB was the CEO–and then hid its own losses with a transaction that the SEC ruled was phony and forced the company to restate its 1989 earnings. GWB sold a hunk of his Harkens stock before the news was made public and did not report this transaction for almost nine months.
An internal SEC memorandum concluded that Bush had broken the law but no charges were filed; since this occured when Daddy Bush was president, one can’t be too surprised. Asked about this business yesterday, our Fearless Puppet said “Everything I do is fully disclosed, it’s been fully vetted.” Yes George and if Daddy hadn’t been president at the time, you never would have been elected governor of Texas, much less president of these United States.
So then the question becomes, does it really matter any more to the non-fabulously wealthy citizen? If Bush and possibly Cheney can run amuck with no repercussion, hiring executives for the Administration from companies that have clearly bought and paid for the chance, do you and I even have a chance in hell to do anything about it? And the stock market appears to love all this terrific CEO hanky panky news too, doesn’t it?
BillSaysThis 