Cheney's mismanagement of Halliburton being exposed

The stock market is plunging on news that Alcoa's CEO is under investigation for tax fraud. Investors are starting to realize that CEOs and their accounting firms have been cooking their books for a while, and the market is taking a beating as a result. One of those crooked CEOs appears to be none other than our good Veep Dick Cheney. His mismanagement of Halliburton looks to go way past $100 million in improperly reporter revenues.

Yup, cooking up the books with $100 million is pretty bad, and is the source of a newly opened SEC investigation. But, what may REALLY get Cheney in trouble is his acquisition, as Halliburton CEO, of Dresser Industries.

Dresser Industries, a company with strong Bush family ties, was bailed out from a sea of asbestos-related tort claims when Cheney's Halliburton acquired the company. As a result, Cheney saddled Halliburton with billions of dollars in potential tort claims and essentially drove its stock price to the ground. Oh, and he also fired 10,000 employees after the acquisition of Dresser. Funny how he claimed during his debate with Lieberman that "''I've been out in the private sector building a business, hiring people, creating jobs.''

These revelations all but ensure that Cheney will face a shareholder's lawsuit and be forced to testify in public. And as in the Enron case, expect the press to trot out some of those 10,000 people who lost their jobs, contrasting it with the $18.5 million windfall Cheney received when he left the company. This is the Bush Administration's "compassionate conservatism": layoffs, stock market crashes, perpetual war, massive deficits, and, oh yeah, tax cuts for the rich.

Posted June 03, 2002 12:37 PM | Comments (0)