Bush Fiat Says Corps Can Cook Books for "National Security"

[JackRiddler]

UNBELIEVABLE!

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/may2006/nf20060523_2210.htm?campaign_id=rss_daily

MAY 23, 2006

NEWS
By Dawn Kopecki

Intelligence Czar Can Waive SEC Rules
Now, the White House's top spymaster can cite national security to exempt businesses from reporting requirements

President George W. Bush has bestowed on his intelligence czar, John Negroponte, broad authority, in the name of national security, to excuse publicly traded companies from their usual accounting and securities-disclosure obligations. Notice of the development came in a brief entry in the Federal Register, dated May 5, 2006, that was opaque to the untrained eye.

Unbeknownst to almost all of Washington and the financial world, Bush and every other President since Jimmy Carter have had the authority to exempt companies working on certain top-secret defense projects from portions of the 1934 Securities Exchange Act. Administration officials told BusinessWeek that they believe this is the first time a President has ever delegated the authority to someone outside the Oval Office. It couldn't be immediately determined whether any company has received a waiver under this provision.

The timing of Bush's move is intriguing. On the same day the President signed the memo, Porter Goss resigned as director of the Central Intelligence Agency amid criticism of ineffectiveness and poor morale at the agency. Only six days later, on May 11, USA Today reported that the National Security Agency had obtained millions of calling records of ordinary citizens provided by three major U.S. phone companies. Negroponte oversees both the CIA and NSA in his role as the administration's top intelligence official.

(snip)

Comment:

It's not like the military-intelligence complex was not already running a universe of secret books. Anyone remember the Pentagon's announcement following an internal audit that it could not account for $2.3 trillion in, ahem, missing assets? (2.3 TRillion, not a typo.) It caused Rumsfeld to declare a "war on waste" on September 10th, 2001. One day later, what should have been the biggest scandal of the decade turned into a forgotten story. (And the SEC offices in New York lay in the ruins of WTC 7.) Now Bush moves to declare legal, by royal fiat, the corporate plunder and the black-budget criminality that has long been the norm. Let a hundred Enrons bloom! Anyone care to bet that Halliburton and Carlyle will be among the first beneficiaries of this latest, open attack on the "rule of law"? How much more can they get away with? And what won't these mobsters attempt, after receiving progressively higher rewards for increasingly bold crimes?

Total Information Awareness, Terrorism Futures, P2OG, Shadow Government, overnight passage of PATRIOT Act, color-coded terror system, continuing violation of Presidential Records Act, NSA phone spying, building of prison camps by KBR, National ID card with biometrics, chipping...

[Vinnie From Indy]

1. Yikes!

If I am not mistaken, this is just another checked box on the fascism checklist.

[tridim]

2. Could he make it retroactive for Kenny Boy who? n/t

[rwenos]

3. Relaxing SEC Authority

This is as disturbing as anything I've read about W's "strong executive." He seems to want an executive branch SO powerful, it can relax rules wherever it wants.

Think of the companies this exempts! Halliburton. The Carlysle Group. Citibank. Exxon-Mobil.

So much for the rule of law. This little jerk is SCARED of a Democratic Congress. The Dem's get the House back, they can start peeling back the skins on the onion on January 3rd.

If the Pubs hold the House, something wicked this way comes.

[ThoughtCriminal]

4. Look for some surprising earnings

with super-extra-turbo-deluxe bonuses for top execs. But when the stock holders find out the numbers are phoney, the senior officers have a nifty get-out-of-jail card.

[ComerPerro]

6. This must be why the economy is "doing so well"

[JackRiddler]

5. Stock market probably going to be crashing...

When word of this gets around, what are people going to think about what they're investing in?

Check out the comments - and remember this is Business Week! Pages and pages, and they all agree it's Corruption Totale!