[thucydides]

Rubin made the call to a treasury official, who refused to do what he asked. No fraud was consummated. Nor was there any conspiracy apparently, since Rubin did not reach agreement with anyone to carry out such a scheme (unless someone could be found at Citibank to say, "yes, we all agreed that he would bring pressure on the rating agencies." However, he clearly tried to do something improper, even if the good character of the treasury official resulted in his being turned down. None of the media is focusing on the fact that so far, Rubin is the only government official who set out do something improper, never mind that he was thwarted. What Rubin set out to do may be worse than what some of the company executives did. They put forth financial statements that undertook some generous and questionable treatments of certain items, yet one could see something questionable was going on, and in fact many analysts concluded that investors should stay away from their stocks long before they went under, calling them a house of cards. On the other hand, had Rubin succeeded, nobody would have had a hint that the ratings put out by the independent rating agencies were false and misleading.

[jackbill]

Rubin made the call to a treasury official, who refused to do what he asked. No fraud was consummated. Nor was there any conspiracy apparently, since Rubin did not reach agreement with anyone to carry out such a scheme (unless someone could be found at Citibank to say, "yes, we all agreed that he would bring pressure on the rating agencies."

In one of the articles about a week ago (might have been a Washington Times editorial) it was mentioned that Ken Lay had called several people in government (maybe Sec. of Commerce, Sec. of the Treasury, etc.) trying to do the same thing that Rubin did. If memory serves, that was Nov. 8, the same day that Rubin called the guy at the Treasury.

Doesn't that sound like there may have been a conspiracy? One of the first questions to be asked of Rubin: Did Ken Lay or anyone else at Enron call you within the week before you called Treasury?

Second question: If so, did that person suggest to you that you should call Treasury (and Moody's as well)?

If "NO", did you suggest to that person that you might call Treasury and see if they could help?

Etc., etc.. And, by the way, I don't think that you have to commit fraud to be convicted of "conspiracy to commit fraud". If I try to hire you to kill my wife and the cops find out, I'm pretty sure that we would both be charged with "conspiracy to commit murder".