Nov 2023 Mod notice:
There may be other, more specific, threads about some aspects of US politics, but this one tends to act as a hub for all sorts of related news and information, so it's usually one of the busiest OTC threads.
If you're new to OTC, it's worth reading the Introduction to On-Topic Conversations
and the On-Topic Conversations debate guidelines
before posting here.
Rumor-based, fear-mongering and/or inflammatory statements that damage the quality of the thread will be thumped. Off-topic posts will also be thumped. Repeat offenders may be suspended.
If time spent moderating this thread remains a distraction from moderation of the wiki itself, the thread will need to be locked. We want to avoid that, so please follow the forum rules
when posting here.
In line with the general forum rules, 'gravedancing' is prohibited here. If you're celebrating someone's death or hoping that they die, your post will get thumped. This rule applies regardless of what the person you're discussing has said or done.
Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Figured I'd cross-post this from the economics thread:
A website has been set up to disseminate the report, www.G Efraud.com, where Markopolos calls it “a bigger fraud than Enron.” The financial investigator, who was probing GE for an unidentified hedge fund, writes that after more than a year of research he has discovered “an Enronesque business approach that has left GE on the verge of insolvency.”
“My team has spent the past 7 months analyzing GE’s accounting and we believe the $38 Billion in fraud we’ve come across is merely the tip of the iceberg,” Markopolos said in the 175-page report. Markopolos alleges that GE has a “long history” of accounting fraud, dating to as early as 1995, when it was run by Jack Welch.
“It’s going to make this company probably file for bankruptcy,” Markopolos told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street. ” “World Com and Enron lasted about four months. ... We’ll see how GE does.”
The stock closed 11% lower in its biggest drop since April 2008, ending the day at $8.01 per share.
GE’s CEO issued a statement calling the allegations false, and driven by market manipulation.
“GE will always take any allegation of financial misconduct seriously. But this is market manipulation – pure and simple,” Lawrence Culp, chairman and CEO of GE said in a statement. “Mr. Markopolos’s report contains false statements of fact and these claims could have been corrected if he had checked them with GE before publishing the report.”
Culp said the fact that Markopolos never talked to company officials before publishing the report “goes to show that he is not interested in accurate financial analysis, but solely in generating downward volatility in GE stock so that he and his undisclosed hedge fund partner can personally profit.”
Enron, which had more than $63 billion in assets at the time, declared bankruptcy on December 2001 in what was then the largest corporate collapse in U.S. history. Roughly 4,000 Enron employees lost their jobs following its collapse. The energy company’s downfall began with the discovery of accounting irregularities. Twenty-one people, including former CEO Jeffrey Skilling, were convicted in the scandal, and accounting firm Arthur Andersen was forced out of business after it was found guilty of obstruction of justice.
A year after the Enron scandal broke, long-distance phone company World Com, filed for bankruptcy after revelations of an accounting fraud. It had $107 billion in assets at the time.
One area of Markopolos’ case focuses on GE’s long-term care insurance unit, for which the company had to boost reserves by $15 billion last year. By examining the filings of GE’s counterparties in this business, he alleges that GE is hiding massive losses that will only increase as policyholders grow older. He claims that GE has filed false statements to regulators on the unit. Separately, he goes on to find issues with GE’s accounting on its oil and gas business Baker Hughes.
The Wall Street Journal first reported on Markopolos’ findings.
Markopolos is a Boston-based accounting expert who gained attention after pointing out irregularities with Bernie Madoff’s investment strategy, and how it was impossible to generate the returns the fraudster claimed years before the Ponzi scheme was exposed. He was largely ignored at the time. More recently, Markopolos helped uncover a foreign currency trading scandal at a group of banks.
The Markopolos group looking into GE includes forensic accounting veteran John Mc Pherson, co-founder of MMS Advisors, which specializes in the insurance industry.
“GE has been running a decades long accounting fraud by only providing top line revenue and bottom line profits for its business units and getting away with leaving out cost of goods sold, SG&A, R&D and corporate overhead allocations,” the report said.
GE’s market value as of Wednesday’s close was $78.8 billion. With Thursday morning’s skid, the market cap was down to $69.9 billion. Markopolos told the paper the insurance unit would need to raise reserves by more than $18.5 billion. He estimates GE’s already hefty debt-to-equity ratio of 3:1 would skyrocket all the way to 17:1 if the company restates its actual results.
Here are the main points Markopolos makes in the report which are now available to read online:
- “This is my accounting fraud team’s ninth insurance fraud case in the past nine years and it’s the biggest, bigger than Enron and World Com combined. In fact, GE’s $38 Billion in accounting fraud amounts to over 40% of GE’s market capitalization, making it far more serious than either the Enron or World Com accounting frauds.”
- “GE utilizes many of the same accounting tricks as Enron did, so much so that we’ve taken to calling this the G Enron case.”
- “Of the $29 Billion in new LTC reserves that GE needs, $18.5 Billion requires cash immediately while the remaining $10.5 Billion is a non-cash GAAP charge which accounting rules require to be taken no later than 1QTR 2021. These impending losses will destroy GE’s balance sheet, debt ratios and likely also violate debt covenants.”
- “When you benchmark GE to a responsible insurance carrier using going concern accounting such as Prudential (PRU), GE needs $18.5 Billion in additional reserves in order to be able to pay claims. We compare GE’s LTC policies to Prudential and Unum, two insurers with similar pre-mid-2000′s vintage LTC policies, but whose policies have much lower risk characteristics than GE’s. Prudential’s 2018 loss ratio on similar policies was 185% and they’re reserving $113,455 per policy while GE’s loss ratios are several times higher and they’re only reserving $79,000 per policy. Just to match Prudential’s level of reserves would require an immediate $9.5 Billion increase in reserves.”
- “GE would change its reporting formats every 2-4 years to prevent analysts from being able to make comparisons across time horizons! In other words, GE went out of its way to make it impossible to analyze the performance of their business units.
- “Why would a company do that? We could only think of two reasons: 1) to conceal accounting fraud or 2) because they’re so incompetent they’re not capable of keeping proper books and records. I’m not sure which reason is worse because both are bad and each is a path to bankruptcy.”
GE is already under investigation by the Justice Department and SEC for potential accounting practices. That includes a $22 billion charge the company took in the third quarter related to acquisitions made in its power business.
The struggling industrial conglomerate abruptly removed its former CEO and chairman John Flannery last year after only a year on the job and installed Culp, former Danaher CEO, as his successor.
Flannery had been appointed in August 2017, taking the reins from Jeff Immelt as GE’s stock steadily eroded. The company’s value had continued set new lows as investors remain unconvinced by Flannery’s turnaround vision. Last summer, GE was kicked out of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. It had been the longest-serving component of the blue chip index at 111 years.
![]()
![]()
Directly no, that'd be stupid.
But Russia is interested in playing geopolitics like the Cold War is still on so we have to do something.
It only takes one party to turn something into a zero sum game, Russia will escalate things regardless of our response or lack thereof.
Thank you
Edited by LeGarcon on Aug 15th 2019 at 5:26:24 AM
Oh really when?No, Garcon is being strawmanned, he wants a more confrontational approach to Russia, not WW3.
And considering that Russia is blatantly undermining Western democracies, propping up radical parties in the EU, supporting that butcher Assad, trying to break up the EU, and used a fucking WMD on a nuclear power/member of NATO, yeah we need to get confrontational.
But that doesn't mean war.
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.Severe economic ties with Russia completely. Russia makes a pretty dime with the collaboration of American companies, if we sever that relationship the Russian economy will tank and they'll vote Putin out of office.
We don't need to shell cities and end lives in poor countries just to stick it to Russia.
I am seeing a few offhand comments that are edging into personal/incivility territory, folks.
Cool it before these offhands turn into thumps.
Also, I'm not sure why we are even discussing posters and thread behavior of yonder, besides seemingly justifying grudges.
All in all, please take it down some notches.
![]()
And then, when the dust settles, the criticism would be "Why USA didn't act then?"
Put the Other Cheek works when you're a individual, states should try to defend themselves and their allies. Russia' aproach to Ukraine is outright colonialism.
Edited by KazuyaProta on Aug 15th 2019 at 4:33:21 AM
Watch me destroying my countryNor is it at war with them. I support funding Ukraine and Syrian opposition to take care of terrorist problems themselves. We don't not need to send our own army in and start slaughtering everyone while civilians die and lose their homes in the crossfire.
The US is not the world's father, its not our job nor our right to tell smaller, poorer countries what to do.
Yes, doing nothing and allowing their forces free reign absolutely is the worst possible response.
I never said that there was nothing to criticize her about, merely that I consider her to have a quite good record over all.
I entirely reject ridiculousness like the idea that she wasn't a progressive.
Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Aug 15th 2019 at 2:36:38 AM
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang(Not meant to be confrontional, just my general assesment to this stance)
Acting as if the USA is the worlds policeman is one of the main reasons why the country has the reputation of a bully in foreign policies today. It was a terrible idea back then and continuing this stance will only make things worse.
Certified: 48.0% West Asian, 6.5% South Asian, 15.8% North/West European, 15.7% English, 7.4% Balkan, 6.6% ScandinavianIt's perfectly reasonable for the US to intervene against Russian proxies, that's just business as usual and has been for a long time. Letting Russian proxies run amok is not in our interests, or the interests of our allies.
Also, it totally is the US's business what happens in other countries. We aren't an island. Our prosperity is built on our global influence. Plus, you have to keep in mind that if we don't meet the Russian Proxies first, they'll come here eventually.
Leviticus 19:34![]()
![]()
On the contrary, we have to see it through.
Bluntly, the democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan are as good as gone now that we're pulling out.
That means no more voting, no more walking freely down the street, and no more children getting to go to school.
Is it imperialism if the people there are begging us to stay and help them?
Edited by LeGarcon on Aug 15th 2019 at 5:53:28 AM
Oh really when?Hardly, we have power and thus we should use that power to make the world a better place. Not to mention that the world is interconnected and ignoring problems is just myopic, it's bad for our interests and bad for everyone else's too.
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji YangWith the US being seen as a bully, you also have to keep in mind that it's impossible to do the right thing without making a lot of enemies.
Leviticus 19:34>Clinton
IIRC, she said that to win the center-left should support such policies like making immigrants learn English
, and other such concessions on immigration policy.
And from the last page...on Don't Ask, Don't Tell, it really wasn't a step forward. Gay Rights groups at the time were livid, especially because Bill Clinton had courted them as voters, only to compromise their rights away the moment it became of political expedience. He then went on to sign the Defense of Marriage Act (essentially stalling the push for Gay Marriage until court cases toppled it in 2011).
DADT wasn't a step forward. It barely did anything, designed to make heterosexual lawmakers feel better with themselves while doing nothing to fight against harassment, or even prevent servicemembers getting thrown out (remember, the military still threw you out if they discovered it, nothing changed on that front).
>Trump, on mental health
I feel like this is telegraphing something nasty, especially with his comments on them a couple days ago. He seems to be moving towards attacking people with mental illnesses with the arm of the law. All while using them as a scapegoat for violence in this country, especially trying to use it as a distraction from white supremacy.
Edited by AzurePaladin on Aug 15th 2019 at 5:59:30 AM
The awful things he says and does are burned into our cultural consciousness like a CRT display left on the same picture too long. -Fighteer

Now I could go into cold war era bodycounts and how differently America and Russia treats it's proxies but I won't.
But what do we do about the Russian attacks on us and our allies? They've only escalated and will continue to do so as Russia regains more strength and further stabilizes itself.
Or are you going to try and feed us all a line about how Russia should be allowed to annex parts of Ukraine and how Assad isn't that bad?
Edited by LeGarcon on Aug 15th 2019 at 5:22:39 AM
Oh really when?