Explaining Cheney's greed -- why he MUST win at all costs: asbestos

[HamdenRice]

One thing that has always puzzled me about rich people is why they are so ruthless about getting richer. This paradox might seem applicable to Cheney, who was made fantastically rich at Halliburton. Why would he help plunge the country into war at the cost of hundreds of thousands of deaths to secure billions in contracts for his old company, Halliburton?

The key to understanding Cheney is that he is not being greedy for more -- he is desperately trying to protect what he has. If Cheney does not win re-election and continue channeling contracts to Halliburton, he runs a serious risk of losing it all -- becoming a penniless former CEO and former VP.

How is this possible?

Cheney cultivates the image of a wise elder statesman and competent manager. He is anything but. This college dropout was a terrible CEO of Halliburton, who almost plunged the oil services giant into banruptcy. Cheney masterminded Halliburton's acquisition of Dresser Industries. While doubling the size of Halliburton, the acquisition also caused Halliburton to acquire Dresser's vast liability for asbestos related injuries to workers and consumers. Asbestos litigation has already bankrupted many industrial giants.

Cheney also failed to properly disclose the extent of Halliburton's new liabilities to stockholders. After Halliburton was hit with hundreds of millions of dollars of asbestos related lawsuits, the price of Halliburton's stock dropped up to 70 percent.

Under the securities laws, a CEO like Cheney could be personally liable for the full amound of the drop in stock price. Although his Halliburton years made Cheney worth tens of millions of dollars, Cheney's liability could be in the billions.

There is one way out however. The liability of a CEO like Cheney is measured by the total fall in the stock price. If Cheney could somehow get the price of Halliburton shares back up, even if he was guilty, the damages he would owe would be zero.

In essence, Cheney is fighting a desperate battle to keep the price of shares of Halliburton up -- by any means necessary. It's not about greed to get richer, but a desperate defensive strategy to avoid becoming a pauper.

Here are some links -- or google "Cheney" and "asbestos".


http://www.guardian.co.uk/bush/story/0,7369,762778,00.html
http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2002/09/02/fin_cheney_left.html

[ret5hd]

1. cheney as a pauper...

food stamps
subsidized housing
old clothes
no friends
no medical insurance
cashing unemployment checks at the usurius check-cashing bodegas

man, seeing that would ALMOST be worth him not going to prison.

[HamdenRice]

2. Cost/benefit analysis

The cost in America lives of invading Iraq: 1,100 young men and women.

The cost in innocent Iraqi civilian lives of the war: 100,000 people, a majority of them women and children

The financial cost to the taxpayers of invading Iraq: $270 billion and counting.


Seeing Dick Cheney with a tin cup begging on Pennsylvania Ave: PRICELESS!

[undergroundpanther]

5. Cheney's such a dick

I'd get a dried cat turd from the cat box put it in a ziplock and when I saw him I'd open the bag up and drop it in Cheney's cup.(Eeeeew)

What type of person most likely claims poverty isn't abusive to a person? The wealthy and comfortable classes say this.Pretending poverty is not painful assuages guilt and excuses the wealth acquiring addiction in our country.Cheney admits poverty is something not pleasant or desirable for any human being to be oppressed by by his dirty actions to avoid it. When rich chicken shit pigs like cheney will murder lie and steal to avoid becoming poor it says something about the painful reality of poverty.Poverty is a tool used as a threat by rich men to get desperate people sell themselves on the cheap. The threat of poverty is the dreaded, very useful and very real bogeyman of the rich,the fear of the 'winner' types, and middle class.

We need to confront what excessive wealthy people have done to hurt our culture and society as a whole..The wealthy are social parasites and bribe our government once companies draw profit without their effort or labor and it is just managed from afar. To end poverty means limiting the reach and grabbing of greedy people and financial abusers.Our wealth and winner worshiping financial system is so competitive and selfish so it distorts and shuts down human empathy for the oppressed even the oppressed classes(poor& labor) buy into the lies of the oppressor class(wealthy)who are oppressing them by withholding money.. say to protect their wealth from the likes of poor people and labor demanding fair pay and help to survive!

Hence Cheney has no empathy for anyone but himself or his class that is why he is a bully.He can commit atrocity and have his buddies cover his ass to avoid poverty.

One way to reduce poverty for all people is by capping how much unused assets one person or company may sit on.Applying a limit on assets to the top 1% of the greedy can halt the awful things these rich people readily do for feeding their insatiable greed, the abuses of wealth-power they do not want to control voluntarily because they are afraid of losing..
The wealthy take from the poor ruthlessly.Why is to so evil for the poor to take a little back and even the playing field so there are more opportunities for all? The wealthy do not want equal opportunity because they are greedy not competitive.Why is equality important in so many spheres of social life in America.. but equality is denied and even undermined in the financial sphere?

The effect of limiting how much a company or person can have is anti monopoly. Breaking up the assets if a few frees up allot of money for the public good when the greedy are forced to let some of it go(or live poor).We can end poverty by making the rich less able to get away with being less obscenely greedy.
Ambitious or inventive people who like to win don't need financial incentives to win or create.Winner's pride and the creative impulse will do it.The greedy are not proud or all that creative in a positive way and they have no ethics ,sanity or morals if their hoarded booty is in danger of being liquidated.

The acquiring class are like active addicts ,So their fear and want makes them do some very irrational, dangerous and harmful things to society to be the biggest of the haves.To be super rich refuse to stop their compulsive greed games even when they have more assets than anyone could possibly use in 20 lifetimes..because they do not want to apply self control concerning acquisition.They freak out if they potentially face poverty or losing the game..The weirdest thing is the top 1 % of wealthy people are far away from poverty, yet they do things to others to acquire more money they don't really need that are illegal and risk their financial standing to get more because it's compulsive not subjected to reason or sanity..

I think this addiction they have is why they need culture of callousness,an underclass,rampant nepotism and favor in courts.The super wealthy are like a clan of wealth addicts watching out for each other's backs while they stab one another in minor ways but never let their own become dirt poor.
Cheney because he's in the addict club will not be on the street with a cup.Cheney I bet will be like the banker in the stock market crash of 1929 jumping out a high rise window to his death rather than face poverty and bankruptcy.This tells you something about how poverty feels.

Poverty is abusive to people,it hurts but keeps them working on the cheap.The wealthy know this but they need the poor to be poor and traumatized obedient to authority(the wealthy or the wealthy's police force)and stay disheartened,hopeless and in their place,so the wealthy class can acquire their fortunes at their expense with a minimum of maintenance fees(wages).

The rich do take poverty as a serious threat to their own well being. Too bad the poor haven't seen the wealthy as the source of their personal and social oppression yet.The wealthy and corporate classes are a big stumbling block to equality,justice,peace and better social well being for more people..

There are other stumbling blocks but unchecked institutional and personal greed is a huge one.
This kind of talk is so taboo in America.It makes people react..Before you react to defend people richer than you will ever be,Ask yourself whom does this imbalance of wealth and the refusal to talk about it benefit? What does not doing anything about it serve really? The wealthy hated having their monopolies broken up by force before and the market did not grind to a halt and the world stop spinning...

But making the greedy give back, it helped the people for a long time until power was consolidated again.The wealthy need to be controlled and limited by the people,the poor and working class lest we live in as a feudal aristocracy.

[HamdenRice]

10. Thank you ...

for your very thoughtful reply!

[Minstrel Boy]

3. Plane Crashes, WR Grace, Deadly Asbestos, WTC Collapse & Wellstone

DU's archives are offline, but this important thread of Stickdog's can be viewed in Google's cache:

Plane Crashes, WR Grace, Deadly Asbestos, WTC Collapse & Wellstone

http://www.google.ca/search?q=cache:kKPavtyJ3o4J:www.democraticunderground.com/duforum/DCForumID60/28856.html+Grace+plane+asbestos+crash&hl=en

[seemslikeadream]

4. W R Grace

n/t

till the archieves come back

:hi:

[JohnyCanuck]

6. kick n/t

[smirkymonkey]

7. Kick!

:kick:

[Karenina]

8. What I visualize for Cheney and his cohorts

is their being FROG MARCHED into a high security prison and STRIPPED of the assets they've stolen, at such an incredible cost to so many.

[Tight_rope]

9. Kick

[HamdenRice]

11. A guestimate of Cheney's assets and liabilities

According to an issue of Forbes around the time Cheney was inaugurated, Cheney's net worth was around $50 million.

Halliburton's market capitalization before the merger with Dresser was in the $7 to $8 billion range. The merger with Dresser doubled to size of the company. Today, it's market cap is about $19 billion.

At one point, Halliburton stock had declined 70%. If most of that was due to Cheney's fraudulent acquisition, and looking only to the losses of pre-merger Halliburton stockholders, a guestimate is that Cheney's liability in a shareholder derivative suit would be in the range of $3 billion.

$3 billion in liability would more than wipe out Cheney's $50 million, although his executive insurance policy could cover purely negligent rather than intentional misconduct.

Cheney's policies are I conclude driven by a well founded fear that he will be wiped out if he cannot keep Halliburton's share prices above water.