Reply #108: The Truth about Bush and Harken Energy

[Octafish]

Nice summation of the business side of treason:

Special Report: The Truth About Bush and Harken Energy Corp.

I keep hearing about George W. Bush and his dealings with a company named Harken. What was his relationship with Harken?

In 1986, Harken Energy Corporation purchased Bush's failing oil company for approximately 212,000 shares of Harken stock, then worth about $600,000. From 1986 to 1993, Bush served on Harken's board of directors. In addition to director's fees, Harken paid Bush between $80,000 and $120,000 a year as a consultant from 1986 to 1993.

That's impressive. It sounds like our MBA president was well respected in the corporate world, and Harken management recognized that.

Bush's ties to Harken were less about his abilities than about his connections. With help from his friends and family in the late 1970s, Bush formed the oil company Arbusto Energy Inc., whose name was eventually changed to Bush Exploration Co. Although this oil venture proved unprofitable, Spectrum 7 Corporation acquired it in a merger in which Bush became chief executive officer.

In 1986, when Spectrum 7 was on the brink of insolvency, Harken bought it, paying Bush and his partners roughly $2 million in Harken stock — Bush's portion being the 212,000 Harken shares. Spectrum 7 had reported losses of $400,000 in the six months preceding the sale and was more than $3 million in debt. According to the Center for Public Integrity, Bush's name and connections were the main reasons Harken was willing to offer so much to purchase the otherwise ruined Spectrum 7 and pay impressive director's and consultant's fees to someone who had yet to launch a successful business venture.

Well, maybe Harken hired Bush on something other than his merit. But, that is not what the hoopla is all about, is it?

No. There are several details about Bush's relationship with Harken that are making headlines. One of them concerns insider loans, which Bush — after benefiting from such loans — now says he opposes. Even more serious questions, many of which have yet to be unambiguously answered, surround Bush's 1990 sale of his Harken stock.

Whoa, wait a second. In the first place, what's the big deal if Bush got a loan? I've gotten mortgage loans, student loans, and other types of loans myself.

Insider loans — loans extended to executives, directors or major stockholders by the organization with which they are affiliated — usually offer generous terms that are not accessible to the average person. Insider loans also make it difficult to accurately appraise the value of a company's stock since they are not always clearly disclosed on corporations' financial statements, which can put stockholders and pensioners in jeopardy. For example, Adelphia's books recorded the approximately $3 billion in loans made to the its founder and his family with nothing more than a cryptic footnote. Often, insider loans are forgiven, or if the CEO quits or if the company fails, they are never paid back to the company.

Insider loans are one of the many factors behind the recent spectacular corporate collapses and the subsequent hemorrhaging of the stock market and people's investment and retirement accounts. WorldCom and Adelphia, for example, transferred hundreds of millions of dollars to their executives in loans, while the companies neared financial collapse and their stocks and workers' retirement accounts plummeted.

CONTINUED...

http://www.thetruthaboutgeorge.com/special/harken.html

Bush was helped (read: "used") by the terrorist-loving, petrodollar-soaked oil monarchs.