Thinking about it afterwards, the way I felt when I heard the news about Osama was very similar to how I felt when I heard that Ceacescu had been executed in Romania. It wasn't something I could get to worked up about, but in both cases I was glad that there was one less poisonous bastard in the world.
Osama Bin Laden is Dead
- Thread starter SciWriter
- Start date
Sure his net worth rose, but NOT as you implied, based on the financial status of Halliburton.
Not one cent of his income was based on how well Halliburton did financially.
He insured his deferred compensation to eliminate that issue and he donated ALL of the proceeds from the Halliburton stock options to Charity.
The fact that he was VP of Halliburton years before he became VP has nothing at all to do with this.
Arthur
I remember the very day Bush and Cheney got elected, I was truly, seriously considering purchasing shares in Halliburton. The only reason I didn't was because I was naive enough to think the US government wasn't actually this corrupt, and that Halliburton's profits wouldn't massively spike on a fake WMD war cooked up by its former CEO. I could have retired at 25 if I had followed through on that hunch.
Most estimates put their stockpile at around 60 warheads. Anyway, yeah, this is all pretty ridiculous. Pakistan's nukes are its most closely-guarded military asset, and vital to their national security - especially in a circumstance where India tries to invade. Their nukes aren't going anywhere. Beyond that, who exactly would they sell them to? What terrorist group has the financial capital to sustain Pakistan's economy for "quite some time"? And why would Pakistan decide to do so, anyway? It would surely result in a direct action response against them by foreign powers.
As noted, Pakistan is already a failed state. Their military is so inept and corrupt that it can't even control territory inside its own borders, much less project power beyond them. The national government fakes outrage at US drone strikes, but it's rhetoric for domestic consumption. They conceded that part of their sovereignty themselves when they started supplying intel for those strikes and letting the drones land/refuel/rearm on Pakistani soil. Even WITH gobs of US aid, the Pakistani military has never won a war, although they are pretty good at committing war crimes.
Total BS.
The Stock was selling in the $20 price range in the end of 2000, but was down to $5.50 by January of 02.
You'd have probably bailed sometime during that freefall and lost almost all of your investment.
Indeed it didn't make it back to the price you would have bought it for until January of 05.
Not many people stick by loosers like that.
But they eventually clawed back and by the time they sold off the B&R subsidiary, the one involved in the Iraq war they were trading around $30.
So if you bought it thinking that the price of the stock was related to the Iraq war and kept it till then, you would have made about $10 per share but it would have taken 6 years, so no you would not be retiring even if you made a big Halliburton purchase in 00.
i.e. 10,000 shares = $200,000 in 02.
Sell in 06 10,000 shares = $300,000 = $100,000, minus ~25% tax = $75,000.
Indeed the run up in value of Halliburton came in 08, well after the sale of B&R and peaked around $50 before the crash in Oct to again, back to below the price you paid for it.
So, if you sold it in 09, then you would have made nothing.
Of course timing is everything in the stock market, but you can't confidently say you would have sold during the brief peaks.
http://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NYSE:HAL
Arthur
Like I said, I anticipated the US government couldn't be that blatantly corrupt, and for the first couple of years they managed to keep up that appearance, and yes I probably would have bailed when the stock crashed around 9/11, had I actually decided to buy shares. If I had purchased those shares in the months prior to the Iraq war, then my investment would have risen in the range of 6-fold or more within a couple of years, and then I could have taken some of that money and donated it to Amnesty International so they can prosecute Dick Cheney.
You don't know that from any info posted here.adoucette said:
You have not posted anything persuasive of that - to note just the obvious, arguing timing among rich men's agreements (so that he is assumed to have incurred no obligations for his huge compensation package upon "leaving" Halliburton in 2000, or set himself up for payoff after leaving office, or anything like that), or ignoring the effects of their tax maneuvers (so that taking millions in charity writeoffs is presented as bringing no benefit to their bottom line), or pretending that the relationships between corporations and their government benefactors is something one can view in media handouts favorably summarizing a small fraction of their tax returns, is not to be taken seriously.adoucette said:
So both Cheney and Halliburton showed excellent timing in their mutual transactions - Halliburton installing its perfectly chosen CEO in a position to influence major government contracts on the eve of war, Cheney taking the tax benefits from his "severance" compensation package at the exact right time, and a company in major trouble legally, operationally, and financially, becoming a fountain of wealth for the right people under the arrangements made.adoucette said:
The obvious is enough to launch a serious Justice Department investigation, and until that has been done reasonable people will simply assume Cheney operated in collusion with his long time associates at Exxon, Chevron, Halliburton, Blackwater, the Saudi Oil Ministry, the Bush Family, et al, throughout his tenure as VP. Why else would Halliburton's board have installed him as CEO in the first place?
He was CEO of Halliburton up until the day he threw in for VP (and a resident of Houston, Texas). Almost all of his net worth and income derives from of that position, then and now.adoucette said:
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BS, I posted all of his tax returns and he did not make any money from Halliburton that was based on the performance of the company, so you, as usual are blowing smoke and have not posted one thing to prove any of the assertions you made.
Arthur
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For what?
BS, I posted all of his tax returns and he became rich well before the Iraq war and since he severed his ties with the company and did not make any money from Halliburton that was based on the performance of the company you still have not posted anything to prove any of the assertions you made.
Arthur
Arthur
For cooking up the Iraq war on fake WMD and 9/11 accusations which led to millions of needless deaths and injuries, enabling his friends to profiteer from said war, and in the process of said profiteering, hiring folks like this to get the (illegal) job done.
The Iraq war wasn't illegal, congress voted for it, and it got rid of Saddam, so it wasn't all bad.
If I go shooting up my neighbour's house on the pretext that he had dangerous weapons, I'll be going to prison for a very, very long time, whether he had them or not. Apparently if I have the right connections and say my neighbour had nukes, that standard no longer applies. I despised Saddam as much as anyone, but there were many options well short of war that were never exercised (such as actually trying to enforce sanctions for a change instead of scratching balls and whistling while nations and corporations were in open violation). And if all those options had truly been tried to no effect, and it was truly imperative for the well-being of planet Earth that Saddam needed to go by any means necessary, the Bush admin should have found a reason to violently impose a new regime on the Iraqi people that didn't involve lying about nonexistent nukes.
No one was able to certify that Iraq was WMD free UNTIL the invasion was over. I also take issue with the Bush administration's certainty, but I don't have to defend them.
Well that's part of the whole problem. Bush didn't say there "might" be WMD's in Iraq, he said Saddam had them, the smoking gun was found, we can all go home and sleep soundly while Shock and Awe Act I begins. No you certainly don't need to defend Bush and I don't see why you'd have any inclination to, and for my part I don't believe Americans as a whole should be held responsible for the lies they've been fed by far-right militant wingnuts in a birth inherited presidential administration.
Iraq was based on info they could obtain.
No evidence has ever been shown that the infomation was cooked up by the Administration. Congress saw the same info and voted for the war.
There was no tie in to 9/11.
Huge exaggeration.
Indeed most of the deaths in Iraq have been from imported radicals using IEDs and car bombing the locals to get them to turn against the US, but that hasn't worked. Indeed, Saddam killed millions of Iraqis in the years leading up to his ouster, and the sanctions were killing about 50,000 per year, so the net is the ousting of Saddam by now has had the net effect of SAVING lives and the bonus it the people now have a Constitutional government of their own choosing.
KBR lost nearly 100 people in that war.
A reasonable cost + profit set up of LOGCAP is hardly a war crime.
Arthur
So I take it you think the Middle East would be better with Saddam still in charge?