Free Republic

White-collar crooks deserve tough treatment. But 24 years for Dynegy's Jamie Olis? Politics has turned financial fraud into a worse crime than running drugs or killing someone. Former Tyco chief executive Dennis Kozlowski is a lucky guy. Not because a stubborn juror landed him a mistrial. He's lucky because even if New York prosecutors retry him, as they've vowed to do, the flamboyant former exec is looking at 15 to 30 years, no more. Were Kozlowski in federal court instead, he could easily be facing what amounts to a life sentence--with no chance of parole--under rigid new sentencing guidelines. While...

McLEAN, Va. - Bankrupt telecommunications company MCI said Friday it is cutting 4,000 jobs — more than 7 percent of its work force — and closing three call centers because of cost-cutting pressures and fallout from the national Do Not Call registry. The company had announced in January that it was expecting to reduce overall costs by 15 percent to 20 percent, but did not mention specifically that jobs would be cut. The centers being closed are located in Denver, Phoenix and Niles, Ohio. Jobs are also being reduced at MCI facilities in Alpharetta, Ga., Colorado Springs, Colo. and Springfield,...

OKLAHOMA CITY -- Former WorldCom Inc. (WCOEQ, news) chief executive Bernie Ebbers was booked Wednesday on criminal charges of violating Oklahoma securities laws in a massive accounting fraud. Mr. Ebbers, whose company collapsed last year in the nation's largest bankruptcy, was fingerprinted and booking photographs were taken of him, said Oklahoma County sheriff's Sgt. Rochelle Thompson. Following booking, Mr. Ebbers was released pending a 1:30 p.m. CDT court appearance before Oklahoma County Judge Russell Hall. Mr. Ebbers and five other former officials with the telecommunications giant, now known as MCI Inc. (MCWEQ, news), are accused of 15 felony counts. Each...

During the business segment at ten to the hour on NPR’s Monring Edition, they had a story that revealed that the Clinton SEC virtually stopped regulating the IPO market until late 1999. The private sector NASDAQ did not enforce their rules any better because both organizations saw a steady decline in IPO fraud, kickback and other white-collar crime enforcement since 1990 despite the skyrocketing number of IPOs during the Dot.com era. These two organizations were completey blind (or purposely blinded) to the behavior going on Wall Street at the time, the public is just now learning about some of the...

<p>July 23, 2002 -- Bernie Ebbers could walk away from the WorldCom mess with $500 million in his pockets - if Uncle Sam doesn't throw him in jail and take it all. The flamboyant founder of the long-distance conglomerate managed to cash out hundreds of millions of dollars from the company in bonuses and options in recent years before it tanked from its cooked books scandal.</p>

PHILADELPHIA (REUTERS) - WorldCom Inc., the long-distance telephone and data services company buckling under a $3.85 billion accounting scandal and a mountain of "junk-rated" debt, may file for bankruptcy protection as early as next week, sources familiar with the situation said on Thursday. A WorldCom spokesperson could not be immediately reached for comment. A bankruptcy filing by WorldCom, which has $104 billion in assets, would eclipse the Chapter 11 filing by collapsed energy trader Enron Corp. as the nation's largest insolvency. The Clinton, Mississippi-based company has lined up about $2 billion in funding that would allow it to keep operating...

The corporate world is now embroiled in two controversies. There's the fraud at Enron, WorldCom, Arthur Andersen, and elsewhere; and there's the payment of absurd sums to CEOs. Both developments threaten the free-market system--you're kidding yourself if you don't think that big firms deliberately duping investors, or CEOs awarding themselves hundreds of millions of dollars that should have gone to stockholders, does anything other than erode the reputation of market economics. Both practices also trample important principles of conservative economics, as we'll see in a moment. But the two controversies really aren't separate--they are one and the same. The motive...