Quoted: FWIW, one thing your liberal friend forgot to mention was that GWB had long since divested himself from Harken Energy, in fact the manner in which he divested himself of Harken interestingly enough meant he committed the same exact crime as Martha Stewart. With the exception that instead of a meesly $40 grand like Martha got tagged for, GWB sold $860,000.00+ worth of Harken stock right before Daddy attacked Iraq for Desert Storm 1, needless to say this was insider info which the rest of the stockholders were NOT privy to. Also little known was that GWB failed to file the proper SEC insider trading forms required until the SEC investigators notified him of his error about 18 months later. No sweat for GWB tho, w/ Dad as the President and both their connection in the SEC (daddy knew the director, GWB had business dealings previously w/ the actual investigator of his case), he simply back-dated the necessary paperwork and didn't even get a slap on the wrist, despite the millions lost by other stockholders who found themselves left holding worthless Harken Energy stock.
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Ok, who stole Mr. Wilson's login?
As a person in the financial industry, W's and Martha's situations are quite different.
* W filed the required form 144 that was needed at the time of sale
* W didn't file the required form 4 that's needed soon after the sale...generally regarded to be about a month. It was filed about 8 1/2 months later
* W didn't solicit the sale, somebody approached him to buy W's stock in June
* W refused, but 2 weeks later said ok
* In August, the company wrote off several charges on their accounting which led to their late August announcement of nonexpected loss.
* The decisions for these charges were made in August
* The day of the announcement, the stock was at $3...it didn't go down when the announcement was made. Later that afternoon, it lost about a buck, a third..big change.
* The next day the stock went back to it's normal price
* The rest of 1990, the stock slid downhill, but in '91 it rebounded and then some...
up to $8!* Harkin's internal financial info was on a 45-day delay..hard to fathom in an era of Oracle 9i and SQL....If W was up on the latest insider info in June (which the SEC said he wasn't), it would have been May's info at best.
* No charges were filed regarding the MIA form 4, investigators insisted at the time it wasn't due to W's political connections and pointed to other situations where Form 144 was filed, but no Form 4..with the Form 144 filed on time, intent is considered shown.
* However, there have also been cases of fines when a form 4 was missed, so W did get on the lucky side on that one.