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| THE STOCK MARKET CRASH OF 1987
In October 1987, the stock market had its worst crash. This chart published by the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) presents the opening prices and closing prices daily from August 1 to October 20, 1987. Prices are represented by an index, which is derived from a weighted average of stock prices. The market low reached on Monday, October 19 was 122.5. The high reached the preceding Thursday, two trading days earlier, was 166.5. This meant that in two days you lost 26 cents on every dollar invested (on average). From two weeks earlier, the drop was 33 cents on every dollar. By way of comparison, the NYSE index has dropped 25 percent in the first seven months of 2002, but in a gradual way. The inserted graph is of trading volume. |
3rd Degree Questions About G.W. Bush’s Finances
—excerpt from Progressive Review, 2000
In 1984, after your firm, Arbusto Energy, had fallen on hard times, you managed to get a job as the 30-something president of Spectrum 7 Energy Corporation, the firm that purchased Arbusto. You also got 14% of the Spectrum’s stock. Meanwhile, your 50 investors in Arbusto got paid off at about 20 cents on the dollar. Is this the sort of thing your new economic advisor, Lawrence Lindsey, was thinking of when he said Americans had become too greedy?
•Or might he have been thinking of the deal in 1986 when, after Spectrum 7 had lost $400,000 in six months, you sold it to Harken Energy, becoming a major Harken stockholder and receiving a good salary as a director and consultant?
•Or was it that time when you sold two-thirds of your Harken stock for a 200% profit on June 22, 1990, just 40 days before the start of the Gulf War and one week before the company announced a $23 million quarterly loss, setting off a 60% drop in share price over the next six months?
•Why were you so valuable to these companies given your less than impressive business acumen?
•When you and your Harken partners ran short of cash and hooked up with investment banker Jackson Stephens of Little Rock, Arkansas, he got you a $25 million stock purchase by Union Bank of Switzerland. Did you know that Sheik Abdullah Bakhsh, who joined your board as a part of the deal, was connected to the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI)?
•Did you know that the United Bank was connected to BCCI (including its operations in Panama), the Nugan Hand Bank (a notorious CIA-front in Australia), and Ferdinand Marcos?
•Did you know that it was Jackson Stephens who introduced the players in what would turn out to be the infamous First American-BCCI deal?
•Why do your think the government of Bahrain chose Harken to drill its offshore wells even though it had never dug overseas or in water before? Why do you think it chose Harken, with no relevant experience, over Amoco, with plenty of it?
•Did you ever discuss with your dad the Harken-Bahrain deal?
•Did any sheiks or other officials ever express any concern over the failure of Harken to find any oil? Do you think they really cared?
•Tell us again why you waited almost a year past the legal deadline to file the necessary SEC report on your Harken stock deal.
•You borrowed $180,000 from Harken at a low rate. Did you ever pay it back or was it included among that $341,000 Harken listed in SEC documents as loaned to executives and later forgiven?
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