Invest in Wall Street or Main Street??
"As much as half of the value of the U.S. financial markets is derived from criminal endeavors, whether it is the laundering of drug money or the fraudulent "cooking" of financial statements to boost profits." -- FTW
Immediate resignations we'd like to see:
George W Bush for loans he received from Harken but which now he calls for bans, and while George WWIII was a director at Harken Energy Corp. in 1990, he sold 212,140 shares of stock for $848,000. The sale was two months before the Texas oil company reported an unexpected loss. Bush notified the SEC of the transaction eight months late. The SEC investigated Bush for insider trading and closed the probe without taking any action against him. -- Thanks to AP/Yahoo!
Vice president Dick Cheney. See "list" of crimes and the Dallas-based Halliburton Co., under investigation by the SEC for its accounting of cost overruns on construction projects when Cheney was its chief executive. The vice president is also a defendant in a lawsuit filed on behalf of shareholders by a watchdog group, Judicial Watch, over Halliburton's accounting practices. Cheney sold stock options worth just over $40 million when he left the oil company in 2000. The company's stock, worth $54.02 a share when he left, is now worth $12.71. -- Thanks to AP/Yahoo!
Army Secretary Thomas White, as an executive at the now-bankrupt Enron Corp., made roughly $50 million in salary in 11 years with the company and made another $12 million when he sold stock last year. The pension plans and investments of many employees and shareholders are now worthless. As former vice chairman of an Enron subsidiary called Enron Energy Services, White denies any role in questionable electricity trading that helped drive up power prices in California. The Department of Justice ( news - web sites) is conducting a criminal investigation of Enron, and congressional committees also are investigating the company. -- Thanks to AP/Yahoo!
Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Harvey Pitt for his fox guarding the hen house conflict of interest role in corporations that cooked the books; i.e., Pitt was Arthur Andersen's attorney before being appointed Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman. See George and Dick's Amazing Corporate Misadventures by Stephen Pizzo, editor of The Daily Enron.
"The SEC has failed; the auditors have failed..." -- Jean Strouse, author of Morgan: American Financier
Putting the responsibility of corporate governance on the CEOs, "The balance sheet must balance..." -- Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan 16JUL2002
With the rise and fall of the dot-coms, and the 911 hit, and now most recently with the Enron and WorldCom, Martha Stewart (ImClone), George W Bush (Harken) and/or Dick Cheney (Halliburton) disclosures, ordinary investors and workers whose retirement plans are tied into the stock market have taken a terrible Wall Street beating.
As explained by Michael "No credibility" Ruppert, "By whatever means necessary, drive a stock's price higher and higher. Make it look like a mover, even if it's a dog. Cook the books and get suckers to buy in, helping to drive the price even higher. When you think the balloon will pop, call all your buddies and sell your shares. That effectively steals all the money that the suckers put in. When the stock crashes, the suckers who weren't part of the scheme will take the loss, whether they be individual investors or the New York City police and fire pension fund." More credible than not.
Conflict-of-interest players to watch: Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Merrill Lynch
Also see: Arthur Anderson LLP
For some interesting background on the Wall Street, the American economy, and President George W. Bush, Enron, New York Stock Exchange, Justice Department, Qwest, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Tyco International, Dennis Kozlowski, Adelphia Communications Corporation, John Rigas, Global Crossing, Bernard J. Ebbers, WorldCom, Dynegy, El Paso Corp., CMS Energy, the Williams Company, Halliburton, Dick Cheney, Arthur Anderson LLP, Harken Energy, Spectrum 7, Aloha Petroleum, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) connection(s), see Dishonesty, Greed and Hypocrisy in Corporate America by Huck Gutman, author, with Congressman Bernie Sanders, of Outsider in the House, published by Verso Books.
Stocks to beware of: GM, GE, Philip-Morris, WorldCom, QWest, Tyco, ImClone, Martha Stewart (the company), Global Crossing, Halliburton, Clear Channel (which owns approximately 1,200 radio stations), Adelphia, Reliant, Motorola and Merck, Arthur Anderson, Xerox, Merrill Lynch, Dynergy, El Paso Corporation, the Williams Companies, CMS Energy, Piper Jaffray, Sotheby's, and EDS (Ross Perot's firm).
Also see California Energy Crisis connected corporations and securities: Duke, Enron, Dynegy, CMS Energy, El Paso, and The Williams Company.
What all of these stocks DON'T have in common is Shari'ah-compliance. Financial "services" or businesses (and banking) that utilize excessive usury (riba) to actually affect profits, and book cooking to inflate profits or hide losses should be in themselves a red flag where not to invest.
Financial "advice" that is a conflict of interest as per "the players" including Arthur Anderson, is a form of Qur'anically defined false measurement and should be considered another red flag issue. Day-trading is considered to be a form of gambling.
There are more than 500 companies world wide that are considered Shari'ah Compliant, that if invested in for the long haul could have avoided the dot-com boom and bust, the 911 effect, and/or the Martha Stewart, George W Bush and/or Dick Cheney securities blow up, shootdown and stock market meltdown (of the predictably near future). Many of the "500" companies, which could have been considered compliant as per the tennents of Islamic law are in fact NOT compliant when the baksheesh card or honest measurement criteria is evoked.
Baksheesh plays out in a number of ways. In just plain bribes: "I'll payola you to play my "How Much is That Doggie in the Window?" tune or tout this or that pets.com or drkoop.com stock. Lobbying and political campaign funding are forms of "legalized" bribery. We see for example the state Israel gets a positive payoff in terms of public relations, perceptions and fair representation whereas Arabs and Palestinians don't get such good press or representation because traditionally Arabs, Palestinians and Muslims don't participate in common lobbying because it is understood to be a form of bribery which is haram (forbidden) in Islamic law (al-Shari'ah).
Media silence on this story is due to the fact that GE (NBC), AOL/Time Warner (CNN), Microsoft (MS-NBC), Viacom (CBS), Disney (ABC), the Chicago Tribune and the L.A. Times, The Washington Post (Newsweek) and the New York Times are "pro forma" players, with stock certicicates to match.
Ed. Note: We don't sell stocks, or otherwise have any affiliation with stock-based companies; we merely search for solid information on the west's best kept investing secret - Islam.
Halal Finance Alternatives INFO
Link to Aloha and Cheney's Anderson promotional video
Dick Cheney - Forbes NewsWire
The Aloha-Harken Connection
Harken Hypocrisy
Bank Lawsuit Accuse Worldcom of Fraud
Stocks Tank as Weak Dollar Overshadows Pharm Deal - July 15, 2002
Wall Street ends panicky session mixed, Dow recovers from 439-point loss
July 15, 2002 4:52 PM ET
Stocks Trade Mixed amid Disappointing Confidence Data - July 12, 2002
LiveJazz
