On Jun 7, 3:15 pm, "gatt" wrote:
"JGalban via AviationKB.com" u32749@uwe wrote in messagenews:735c640ba893b@uwe...

I don't defend Enron, but am also not entirely sympathetic to those who
"lost their whole retirement nestegg". I saw a lot of news stories
about
these unfortunate folks, but never heard a reporter ask them the obvious
question. "Why would a sane person invest their entire retirement nestegg
in
one company's stock?".

Because they trusted the company they'd worked for for so long, before Enron
bought it, and none of them expected that the company would be acquired and
destroyed by felons.

That's a pretty lame investment strategy. All of us learn from
an early age not to put all our eggs in one basket. Blind trust in a
corporation seems rather naive. Who exactly are you trusting? A
corporation is not a person.

Sort of like how my father trusted United before they furloughed him a year
before his retirement and then annihilated his pension. (But don't worry,
the taxpayers will handle that burden. )

Your father didn't have a choice. A company pension plan is not
the same as a 401K. The Enron folks had numerous choices for
investment of their savings. Enron stock was just one of them.

Enron employees were not required to buy Enron stock in their retirement
plans. They did so because of one reason. Greed.

Is that why people buy XOM stock? Greed?

If you put your whole nestegg into XOM hoping to make a quick
killing, rather than choosing a well diversified portfolio that will
generate a safer, more modest return, yes. You have no one to blame
but yourself. You might as well take your life savings and drop it on
the roulette table in Vegas.


Enron was most definitely a scam, but common sense goes a long way
towards
minimizing the effect of any one bad apple on one's retirement portfolio.

How is that relevant to corporate corruption?

It is only relevant to comments such as your previous one about your
neighbor the electrician. I have a relative that was a 25 yr. Enron
employee who did not lose his life savings. Before the collapse, his
coworkers made fun of him for not shifting his entire portfolio to
Enron stock and making easy money.

John Galban=====N4BQ (PA28-180)