Report: U.S. may charge ex-execs at Broadcom, Apple

Former executives at several companies may face criminal charges related to backdating stock options, newspaper reports.

The story "Report: U.S. may charge ex-execs at Broadcom, Apple" published February 16, 2007 at 4:51 AM is no longer available on CNET News.

Content from Reuters expires after 30 days.

[Below Meigh]

Yeah...here it comes...

Back in May of 2006, Nancy Heinen, General Counsel and Secretary, had left Apple. She knew what was coming and even hired her own counsel. Take the fall girl.

[retiarius]

But Sonsini blessed Apple moves

Heinen obtained outside counsel opinion interpreting
this grey area of the SEC accounting regulations.

Although media wants to "anthropomorphize"
the whole affair by inferring that there are 200+
criminal masterminds here, it's really just about a
couple law firms interpreting ambiguous regulations five
years ago.

Sarbox firmed up the rules, and now a few overzealous
career prosecutors (is there any other kind?)
want to make these new rules retroactive. It's all so
ex-post-facto.

[asdf]

CEOs are greedy to the point of mental illness

Don't kid yourself. Every *single* person involved in this was already a multi-multi millionaire or better. It's what Galbraith said:

"People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage."

Let me ask you- what do you think the truly deeply pathologically greedy people do in society? Where are they? Sure some of them are in jail, (and apparently some more are on their way) but suppose you're more organized than that? What do you do with yourself?

Why does society place so much credibility on the words and demands of people who are the worst society has to offer outside jail? Think of all the million and one accounting laws we enacted, SOX regulations, prosecutorial hours spent etc etc , not to mention all the economic fallout from the white collar crime over the years. Why do we listen to companies when they say anything? They need more tax breaks. They need more immigrants, more H1Bs, less regulation, they want SOX repealed etc etc... they can't make a buck!

Our problem is instead of treating them like the lying, sociopaths they are, we idolize them. We listen to them in policy matters instead of treating them like the not-yet-caught criminals they are.

People like this will always exist until we figure out what's wrong with them and twist that strand of DNA. For now, we know with very high probability who they are- they're the CEOs and CFOs and boards of companies. That's where the most cunning, sickest, amoral people arrive.

We need to shift away from thinking so well of this type of "success". Americans have a history of being in love with success no matter how it was acquired. That has to change. Chicagoians were in love with Capone in his time- he was a rock star. Who knows why? Maybe it's because women are attracted to power and men are attracted to women and compete for power to get women. Who knows? The point is, we have lots of genetically fueled impulses like this that we learn to deal with through a variety of cultural and societal mechanisms, not the least of which is shaming and punishment.

White collar crime and tax avoidance schemes will bankrupt this nation and devalue your currency. Denying global warming because your company makes a lot of money in oil or it would cost your company money to adjust and that means less money for you personally this year will destroy civilization as we know it. Don't say they're not crazy enough to actually do it. The right-wing think tank American Enterprise Institute right now has a 10,000 bounty they're giving to anyone and everyone who will go on record refuting the recent report of global warming. The AEI is funded by people just like these in this news story. People who are barely human, but more like single-minded special purpose machines who will do and say anything anything anything so long as they can shovel another truffle in their mouths and enjoy another day of private jets, prostitutes and 5 star restaurants. They're pathologically, self-destructively (but they'll take us all with them too!) greedy.

There's a reason avarice is one of the seven deadly sins. Because it kills. It will kill us all unless we as a nation wake up ad stop seeing "successful" people in the manly, can-do glow ane start seeing these people for what they are. Sociopaths who will tell any lie, destroy anything and everything, pollute the world and turn it into a sh*thole just to make a few more dollars. That's as diseased as Charles Manson or Hitler or Stalin or whoever, all men who were seen as "powerful" by their groupies and admirers.

The solution is this- strict , pervasive laws followed on by strict enforcement- the only thing the rich fear is punishment applied to their individual selves; they live at that level of understanding.

If the greed-junkies at the AEI and the people like them continue to succeed in thwarting action on global warming, the world and Americans themselves will deal harshly not just with them, but with the corporate system that created them. Don't think that just because exactly what you did now was not a exactly and precisely criminal that you won't be hunted down and dealt with like criminals when populations are starving, hundreds of millions are migrating and international chaos breaks out. If you read history the real villains were guilty of nothing within the framework that they created for themselves. It's when the opposing forces finally got the upper hand that what actions were and were not illegal and criminal was determined, and it wasn't their their buddies doing the reckoning. Don't think that the boards and CEOs and "researchers" and policy mavens and all the rest who are blocking action on global warming will always be in power. Americans will come to see them for what they are- usurpers of democracy and civilization itself and they'll find themselves at the ends of a rope just like Saddam.

CEOS are by and large mentally ill with a disease called greed, and it's time to stop listening to anything they say and start listening to scientists and people who work for the general good. They're the real "studs" of the affairs of men.