A couple of good ones to pass along to friends as we move on toward the weekend. First, from Letterman:
“We’ve had so much rain here this week. Do you realize that we are this close to being ignored by FEMA!”
Then, from Leno on the Minnesota Vikings players’ recent Lake Minnetonka escapade:
“What are they, 1-3? That’s the only offensive thing they’ve done all season.”
As Roy O brings the Stros home from St. Louis in a 1-1 tie in the National League Championship Series, Art De Vany, Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of California, Irvine, provides this thought-provoking paper (pdf) in which he debunks the popular theory (of which I have never been comfortable) that MLB sluggers’ taking of muscle-enhancing steroids were the primary reason that several old home-run records were broken over the past decade. As Professor De Vany notes here and here:
The latest version of my paper, “Has Home Run Hitting Changed in Major League Baseball” is now up.
I take up the matter of steroids more directly and also such possible influences as “hotter” baseballs, altered ball parks, smaller strike zone and find them all to be lacking. They do not stand up to verifiable tests or statistics. And they shouldn’t because no explanation is required. There has been no increase in MLB home run hitting. Three home run hitting geniuses appeared in a brief time span and will soon be gone. Enjoy them and don’t look for explanations when none are required. The law of home runs and extreme human accomplishment that I develop tell us that we never know when this kind of genius will appear, only that it will be rare and intermittent.
Among the interesting aspects about living in the Houston area are the interesting things that one can find near one of the area’s many bayous in residential areas within or near Houston’s inner loop:
A contractor hired by the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department captured a 9-foot-long, 275-pound male alligator Thursday near Greens Bayou just outside Houston.
“He was removed without incident,” said Capt. Albert Lynch, a state game warden in Harris County, “but as many alligators as I’ve moved over the years, they usually do put up quite a fight.”
The alligator was caught right off Interstate 10 near the intersection of Normandy, in a flood-detention canal near Greens Bayou, . . .
As noted in this earlier post, an old fashioned run on the bank resulting from a lack of trust in the marketplace — as opposed to losses attributable to a relatively small number of shady business deals — is what really caused the demise of Enron. The revelations over the past week relating to Refco, Inc. — the largest independent futures-brokerage firm in the U.S. — has generated a similar lack of trust in the marketplace that has thrown Refco into its own Enronesque experience.
Although no where near the size of Enron, Refco is still a pretty darn big outfit. It has over $4 billion in approximately 200,000 customer accounts, and Refco’s futures-brokerage business is as big as the derivatives desks of most major Wall Street firms. The company is well-known for trading commodities, currencies, bonds and derivatives transactions with a wide-range of trading partners and counterparties, including hedge funds and customers attempting to hedge risk. Nevertheless, Refco — as with many such trading firms — is highly-leveraged, as its most recent public filings reflect about $75 billion in assets and a roughly equal amount in liabilities.
Here are a couple of sites that provide comprehensive information regarding President Bush’s nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court:
This University of Michigan Law Library site is a good resource for background materials on Ms. Miers (hat tip to Tom Mighell for the link);
and
This Legacy Network site that provides a comprehensive outline of, and background materials on, the pro and con arguments in regard to the Miers nomination (hat tip to Gordon Wood for the link).
Better, I think, to focus one’s evaluation of the nomination based on information gleaned from these resources than this type of thing.
It’s not as sexy as some of the Enron-related criminal trials, but the trial of two former Duke Energy natural gas traders began in Houston federal court yesterday.
Former Duke traders Timothy Kramer and Todd Reid face racketeering, conspiracy, wire and mail fraud, money laundering and falsifying corporate books charges in connection with an alleged scheme to book phony electricity and natural-gas trades to boost trading volumes and inflate profits in a trading book that was the basis of their annual bonuses (you can download a copy of the indictment here). A third former Duke Energy trader defendant — Brian Lavielle — previously copped a plea and will presumably testify against Messrs. Kramer and Reid during the trial.
Well, Eliot Spitzer has had better days at the office than yesterday.
First, Mr. Spitzer finally chose not to retry (persecute ?) former Bank of America Corp. broker Theodore Sihpol III, who was acquitted on 29 of 34 criminal charges relating to alleged improper trading of mutual funds in June and settled related civil charges with the Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday. The Lord of Regulation had announced a short time ago that that he planned to retry Mr. Sihpol on the charges. Here are the earlier posts on the Sihpol case.
Although not particularly impressed by the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, I decided to wait to evaluate her performance during the Judiciary Committee hearings before finally deciding whether to support or not support her nomination (as if anyone cares what I think, anyway!) ;^).
However, several bloggers are doing a good job discussing the implications of the nomination, particularly Stephen Bainbridge and William Dyer. Most of the debate from such responsible bloggers is well-reasoned and above-board, but David Frum weighed in a couple of days ago (see post “What the Insiders are Saying”) with a post based on alleged well-placed confidential sources who contend that the Miers nomination is the product of the Peter Principle.
Welcome to the big leagues of petty politics, Harriet.
This Criminal Crime Reporter article reports on the talk that one of Richard Scrushy’s attorneys — Jim Jenkins of Atlanta, Ga. — gave at the at the recent National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers – Georgetown University White Collar Crime conference. The article provides a fascinating glimpse of the behind-the-scenes story of how the Scrushy defense team developed and implemented its defense of Mr. Scrushy against the government’s charges. Previous posts on the Scrushy case may be reviewed here, here, here and here.
Hat tip to Ellen Podgor for the link to the piece on Mr. Jenkins’ talk, which she notes was “the most popular event” at the conference. I can see why, as the article relates numerous solid observations regarding defending a complex business case, the most important of which is to communicate with integrity a simple and straightforward theory of the case to the jury, and to remind the jury of that theory throughout the trial. Cases such as the Scrushy case are nearly impossible to win in the court of public opinion, but — even with the overwhelming odds in favor of the prosecution in such cases — they can be won in the courtroom.
Robert Weisberg is Edwin E. Huddleson, Jr. Professor of Law and director of the Criminal Justice Center at Stanford University, where he teaches a course on white collar crime with David Mills, who is a senior lecturer there. In this Wall Street Journal ($) op-ed, Messrs. Weisberg and Mills dissect the Justice Department’s indictment against eight former KPMG partners for their involvement in advising and promoting allegedly illegal tax shelters for clients of the firm. Messrs. Weisberg and Mills point out that there is just one small problem with the indictment:
In the months leading up to it (and the now-rumored indictment of other tax advisors on similar grounds), numerous news stories suggested the KPMG accountants had somehow knowingly participated in tax fraud by creating fake losses for wealthy clients. Whether or not this proves true, the indictment makes no such allegation.