That squares with what I know, rimbaud. But that trust is not permanent, is it? He will still own the principal worth of those shares once he leaves office -- is that not true? If he indeed has given up control of that stock permanently, then I need to update my opinion. But reliquishing control for four years hardly strikes me as a noble path when he's supposed to be working full-time for us anyway.
Oh good grief. Foul looking payments? It's money that was earned long ago and was deferred out into the future. It's called deferred compensation, not "foul-looking payments". It's quite common, and frankly I'm surprised that even the layman like yourself isn't familiar with it. And for the last time, there is a huge difference between owning shares and owning the option to purchase shares. This is not the first time I've said this in this thread. Please review the entire thread. The bottom line is this: The liberals are hell bent on establishing a financial tie from Halliburton's success to Cheney's pocket book. There is no such tie. Halliburton could become the richest company in the world, and Cheney's financial picture would not change one by one red cent. He has absolutely no incentive to make 'sweetheart deals' with them. It is pure lunacy to think that he would jeopardize his political career to enrich his former employer. That's proposterous. There are even some liberals who think that the entire War on Terror was an attempt to enrich Houston-based oil companies. That is just downright absurd. There is absolutely, positively no conflict of interest.
Currently 400,000 shares of Cheney's Halliburton stock are underwater. Halliburton is trading around $30.75. 100,000 @ $54.50 300,000 @ $39.50 33,333 @ $28.125 http://money.cnn.com/2003/09/25/news/companies/cheney/?cnn=yes
I also found this. From an August 2000 article Some of the 400,000 options will not vest for Cheney until December of this year, before he takes office if elected vice president. Other options will not vest until December 2001 or December 2002, meaning that Cheney would retain a substantial personal interest in Halliburton well into his term of office. According to a Halliburton officer, the options cannot be transferred or donated to charity except after Cheney's death, by his heirs. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/aug2000/chen-a18.shtml
Trader_Jorge, Of course I agree it seems preposterous for Cheney to risk his political standing with such connections. He's a smart guy, but he's also a smart guy who feels very entitled to certain things, and he has a certain arrogance. As for "foul-looking," I'm talking about to the average American. It just has a very bad appearance. Just like duck hunting with a supreme court justice in the months before his case was headed to the supreme court. Not smart PR -- flippant arrogance. And I don't see how your financial analysis squares with the results of the congressional investigation, as referenced by mc mark. I can only square them as follows (in my feeble financial way). Cheney will not sell those shares in his lifetime, let's assume. So you can freely say he will not *collect* one red cent in his lifetime. That's fair. But his heirs clearly inherit the stock -- is that not correct? Does Cheney care about his offspring (even the gay one)? I believe he does. Would he like Halliburton to do well so that his heirs will be better off? I would certainly hope he cares about his family, so it's obvious. Cheney will not take out the halliburton-related options and go spend it on a yacht. But these options are a non-trivial part of his largess, and they can significantly benefit his family. Why not just separate himself as much as possible? It would be trivial for him to reestablish a host of industry connections and salaries once he leaves office. Some steps are worth taking for the sake of appearances when one steps into public life.
B-Bob: HE HAS NO SHARES. HE HAS OPTIONS TO PURCHASE SHARES AT SET PRICES. ANY UPSIDE HE RECEIVES ON THE EXERCISE OF THOSE OPTIONS IS PLEDGED TO CHARITY.
The stock has to double in order to make 100,000 of the shares worth anything. It has to go up 25% in order to make 300,000 of the shares worth anything. The set prices currently aren't very good.
Oh, okay. It all makes sense in all caps now. Maybe you should send an all-caps message to that congressional investigation committee. Here's an honest question left over from my last post: IS THE "UPSIDE" PLEDGED TO CHARITY AD INFINITUM, OR RATHER DOES THE FAMILY OF RICHARD CHENEY STAND TO REAP FINANCIAL BENEFIT AFTER RICHARD'S DEATH? Either way, he still should have made the smart PR move, avoided a situation that requires lectures in stock finance to argue that he's not financially connected.
B-Bob: No hard feelings. I accept your apology. To answer your question, where do you find the information that leads you to believe there is some reversionary interest in which the proceeds from the sale of options come back to Cheney or his family? I have never seen such an instrument relating to a stock option. What makes you think something like this exists? My guess is nothing. You are just trying the best you can to salvage the financial tie theory.
Batting the cloud of obscuring numbers aside (besides - does anyone think Cheney's going to say, "Oops, you caught me. Ha ha, okay I AM making money from Halliburton.")- It doesn't take much more than common sense to sense something shady in Halliburton getting a no-bid contract in Iraq while the sitting vice-president is also their former CEO. It's not that complicated. Everything else is spin.
Please tell me how creditors cannot reach his deferred compensation plan. Assuming this is a NQDC, not subject to ERISA rules, an employer's creditors can attach the funds in the event of the company's bankruptcy.
Wow. Maureen Dowd with a blistering view of Cheney and the "F" word, along with a lot more... June 27, 2004 OP-ED COLUMNIST Are They Losing It? By MAUREEN DOWD WASHINGTON One thing you've got to say for Dick Cheney: No one will ever again dismiss the vice presidency as a pitcher of warm spit. Mr. Major League Potty Mouth has shown that, with obsequiousness to the president and obtuseness to the facts, a vice president can run the world. Right into the ground. This week, it's not just Democrats who are questioning whether Vice is losing it. Now, even some in the White House are saying it's bizarre that he chose a class photo-op on the Senate floor to suggest that Senator Patrick Leahy do something that you won't even find described in Bill Clinton's "My Life." While Democratic lawmakers delayed final passage of a defense spending bill so they could mingle with Michael Moore, the once sweat-free Bushies were acting jangly. First Vice chewed out The Times for accurately reporting that the 9/11 commission said there was no collaborative relationship between Saddam and Al Qaeda. Then Paul Wolfowitz called the reporters risking their lives in Iraq craven rumormongers. Then came Mr. Cheney's F-word. (Not Fox, the other one.) Finally, President Bush got agitated when an Irish TV interviewer said most of the Irish found the world more dangerous now than before the Iraq invasion. "First of all, most of Europe supported the decision in Iraq," Mr. Bush declared. (It's all in how you define "Europe.") Even as Tom Daschle proposed bipartisan family retreats to heal the harsh mood, even as the Senate passed the "Defense of Decency Act," Mr. Cheney profanely laced into Mr. Leahy for criticizing Halliburton's getting no-bid contracts. "I felt better afterwards," he told Neil Cavuto during a no-bid interview with Fox News. Hey, if it feels good, Dick, do it. He said he had no regrets about his "little floor debate in the United States Senate." He didn't want to go along with Mr. Leahy's attitude that "everything's peaches and cream" when the Democrat had just been jawing about Halliburton war profiteering. Peaches and cream have never been on the Bush-Cheney menu, only brimstone and gall. By playing on the insecurities of an inexperienced leader, Mr. Cheney has managed to change W. from a sunny, open, bipartisan, uniter-not-a-divider, non-nation-builder into a crabby, secretive, partisan, divider-not-a-uniter, inept imperialist. Vice is bounding around the country, talking to his usual circumscribed audiences of conservatives, right-wing think tanks and Fox News anchors. No need to burrow in the bunker when you've turned America into one. As they used to say about the Soviet Union, the defensive Bush imperialists have to keep expanding because they're encircled. Mr. Cheney's gloomy, scary, contentious world view has fueled a more gloomy, scary, contentious world. After disastrously dividing the world into the strong (Bush hawks) and the weak (everyone else), Vice turned his coarseness into another macho, tough-guy moment against a Democrat considered a pill by many Republicans. "I think a lot of my colleagues felt that what I had said badly needed to be said, that it was long overdue," he preened. The conservatives defending Mr. Cheney are largely the same crowd that went off the deep end because of a glimpse of breast on the Super Bowl, demanding everything from fines to new regulations to protect red states from blue language. Mr. Cheney's foul outburst was not as bad as his foul reasoning. On Fox, he again belabored his obsession with "links" between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Exhibiting WASP chutzpah, this time he used The Times to bolster his faux case. But the Thom Shanker story he cited said only that in the mid-1990's, Iraq agreed to rebroadcast anti-Saudi propaganda and that a request from Osama "to begin joint operations against foreign forces in Saudi Arabia went unanswered." Rebroadcast anti-Saudi propaganda? As a threat to U.S. security, that's right up there with Iraqi "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities." Mr. Cheney assured Fox's anxious viewers that he would stay on the ticket and in the White House until January '09. (No four letter words, dear Democrats.) Vice said of W., "he knows I'm there to serve him." Mr. Bush must have missed that classic "Twilight Zone" episode where the aliens arrive with a book entitled, "To Serve Man." It turns out to be a cookbook. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/27/opinion/27DOWD.html
Thank you. If you have to do backflips to find a way to clean Cheney's hands, the situation is fishy. No apology was granted, _Jorge. Sorry to hear about the further deterioration of your reading comprehension. From your post, I take it you've never heard of inhertitance. This really changes my view of you and what you're about, which is good. Dowd rocks, by the way. Her image of Richard transforming W is pretty spot on. Cheney's proud refusal to apologize for his infantile outburst is telling, to say the least.
These guys are human (though Cheney is probably half-machine by now) and they're going to have outbursts. I'm disappointed that the second most powerful man in the world resorted to name-calling and mean-spirited attacks, but it's not like I held Cheney in high regards anyway. Leahy's response was pretty classy, though.
I find it funny that T_J has no clue about deferred compensation and is calling people out on something he himself does not understand. T_J, once again, see my post above on this page. Tell us how a deferred compensation plan is not affected by a company's bankruptcy. Have you ever heard of ERISA, discrimination rules, Non-qualified accounts for executives?
Ho ho ho! Lookie here! You haven't been through too many bankruptcies have you? Your inexperience shows. If you did have the experience I have, then you would know that it's not what happens *after* the bankruptcy filing that matters, but before. You see, your focus is entirely wrong. Now Riet, I have a little assignment for you, since you are such an eager little beaver today. I request that you study up on how executives can protect themselves from becoming an unsecured creditor in the case of a bankruptcy. When completed, please report back to the board. You could use a lesson in humility, son. I'll be nice though and just ask you to do a little homework. I'll give you a hint on where to start: I'm right (as usual).
