4
Tuesday, December 2, 1986 / University Daily Kansan
Opinions
Keeping the market free
In a month that found more than one scandal likened to Watergate, the Boesky-Levine Wall Street connection proved the easiest to understand. They manipulated the stock market to make millions of dollars.
ine only problem was that it wasn't their money.
Unfortunately, that was only a technicality for these financial wizards and their fellow inside traders who slithered through the concrete canyons of New York. It was easy. It was corrupt. And everybody was doing it. So why not?
In risk arbitrage, the whole show is a bet. Getting inside information was the best way to fix the odds, Ivan Boesky, a.k.a Ivan the Terrible, got caught. It cost him $100 million and the opportunity to ever trade on the exchange again. It also meant a shake-up on Wall Street that is likely to continue into next year, and will take some of the hottest names in money with it.
The free market system is just that, free. When the meddling hand of the inside traders fueled the flames of merger madness in corporate America, it began to eat away at the freedom of the market. Sure bets turned into sure losers and no one could figure out why. The answer was the inside traders.
Good.
The Securities and Exchange Commission deserves the credit for cracking the scheme. It all started with a letter from a South American investor to the Merrill Lynch brokerage in New York. When Merrill Lynch officials figured out their traders were mimicking investments by an investor using a Swiss bank account, they alerted the SFC
From there the SEC launched the largest clandestine operation in its history that finally landed Boesky.
The Boesky investigation has sent the inside traders scurrying for cover, hoping to avoid being caught in the SEC's snare. It has left the market free again.
Aquino's making strides
Things looked bad in the Philippines.
Persistent rumors of an impending coup and harsh criticism from Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile threatened Corazon Aquino's administration; the more Enrile spoke out against Aquino, the more it looked as if the lady in yellow wouldn't be in office for long.
But last week, Aquino took decisive action. She fired Enrile, replacing him with Rafael Ileto, former ambassador to Iran and Thailand, and she struck a two-month cease-fire deal with the communist rebels, whose insurgency has been going on for 17 years.
If anyone had doubts about Aquino's ability to lead the troubled Philippines, they were proven groundless last week. Aquino is nobody's puppet; not the United States', not the communists', not Enrile's. But her problems are far from over.
After the assassination of leftist trade-union leader
Rolando Olalia, people used the funeral as a pro-Aquino demonstration because Olalia's assassins were suspected to have ties with deposed leader Ferdinand Marcos.
Any possibility of a coup was quickly stamped out by Chief of Staff General Fidel Ramos, who supports Aquino, but he is also concerned about the direction the country is taking. Ramos is a key ally for Aquino, but she may have to risk losing his support if she is to carry out her presidency on her own terms.
The cease-fire with the communists may only last 60 days, but it stands as the first breakthrough with the rebels in 17 years. Any time deaths are prevented, it is a major accomplishment. Aquino's detractors may claim she is being too soft on the communists, but the fact that she made a determined effort to talk to them, and that they listened to her, stands as a major accomplishment.
The habit of cowards
More than 30 million Americans every day are engaging in a ritual so sordid, so embarassing, that they feel compelled to lie about it to friends and family rather than face object humiliation.
They...watch soap operas. Each day, these covert viewers, most of them perfectly normal in every other way, retreat into the closet. Because, of the millions of people who avidly watch the exploits of the residents of all the Port Charleses and Pine Valleys out there in TV land, a good number are bath to admit to it.
A recent study by two professors at eastern colleges turned up some not-surprising facts on the subject. Seventy percent of the people
poiled actually confessed to watching the soaps. (Undoubtedly, some of the remaining 30 percent were yellowbellies who do, indeed, watch soaps.) Ninety percent of those who admitted to being soap watchers said they had been teased by people who discovered their viewing habits.
Even those brave enough to admit to being soapaholics turned cowardly when the heat was on. They said they only watched the soaps for a laugh, or to relax.
The only thing more pathetic than closet soap watchers are game show fans. According to the study, the only television genre viewed lower than the soap opera is the game show. Take that, Pat Sajak.
News staff
**News staff**
Lauretta McMilen...Editor
Kady McMaster...Managing manager
Tad Clarke...News editor
David Silverman...Editorial editor
John Hanna...Campus editor
Frank Hansel...Sports editor
Jack Kelly...Photo editor
Tom Eblen...General manager, news adviser
**Business staff**
David Nixon...Business manager
Cregory Kael...Rotal sales manager
Denise Stephens...Campus sales manager
Sally Depew...Classified manager
Lisa Weems...Production manager
Duncan Coulson...National sales manager
Everly Casten...Traffic manager
Jeanne Wines...Sales and marketing adviser
Letters should be typed, double-spaced and fewer than 200 words and should include the writer's name, address and telephone number. If the writer is affiliated with an organization, the information should be in italics.
Guest shots should be typed, double-spaced and fewer than 700 words. The writer will be photographed.
The Kansan reserves the right reject or edit letters and guest shots. They can be mailed or brought to the Kansan newsroom, 111 Staffer-Flint Hall.
The University Daily Kansan (USPS 650-640) is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Stauffer Flint Hall, Lawrence, Kan. 60405, daily during the regular school year, excluding Saturday, Sunday, holidays and finals periods, and on Wednesday during the summer session. Second-class postage and at Lawrence, Kan. 60404. Subscriptions by mail may be processed for $77 in Douglas County and $93 in Douglas County and $35 a year outside the county. Students who pay $3 are paid through the student activity fee.
POSTMASTER. Send address changes to the University Daily Kansan, 118
Stuffer Fint Hall, Lawrence, Kan. 66045
The first, familiar signs are there: dissatisfaction with one episode is becoming dissatisfaction in general. Questions about credibility turn into
The unraveling of the presidency
It's happening again. The president
ev is unraveling.
Paul Greenberg
questions of competence. Teeth are gnashing and knives flashing. Disaffection isn't here yet but its harbinger are — the kind of politicians and critics who are in their glory when the country isn't.
Sam Donaldson of ABC looks like the man of the hour again, always an unhappy sign for the body politic, and the rest of the pack is not far behind.
"If covert operations grew any faster, they'd be listed on the New York Stock Exchange," said one from his perch at Harvard.
Hangers-on who went down with the Carter administration seize the chance to get their own back. Their old chief is on television telling this president how to handle an Iranian hostage crisis — the equivalent of
Every unhappy aide in the Reagan administration suddenly has a chance to become one of those anonymous sources poisoning the administration, who have led the administration now have a chance to get back with a gun.
Harold Stassen offering a course in how to win elections.
Elsewhere, a Democrat who lobies for Saudi Arabia is heard pontificating, and, more remarkably, is quoted in a serious periodical.
"We are seeing," he says, "as we did toward the end of the Carter administration, disarray, inability to cope with our problems, generalized fallout that is going to do damage."
Jimmy Carter himself, the leader of that dismal platitude called an administration, now second-guesses the successor who restored the presidency he brought low. It is to laugh, but Jimmy Carter's words are presented with deadly seriousness, as only television can.
All of this would go against Reagan's well-known tendency to ride out embarrassments and stay neutral in tiffs between his advisers. In the past, that stance has protected him against having to take responsibility for their mistakes. Now it is making this President look as beleguered and ineffectual as his predecessor; no president can afford to look like that for very long.
His diagnosis sounds more like vengeance than analysis. But it can be self-fulfilling if echoed and reechoed, amplified and elaborated in a hundred days day after day. Look for a somber interview soon with Chicken Licken on the front page of the New York Times.
It's not enough to note that the Reagan administration made a dreadful mistake by trying to ransom some hostages and then, worse, denying it. That mistake must be identified with the whole range of American history.
dent's spectacularly unsuccessful speech when this blunder was exposed.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, to whom hyperbole comes as naturally as the cocktail hour, says that these secret negotiations with Iran represent "the worst handling of an intelligence problem in our history," which is to do even greater violence to historical perspective than to this administration's reputation.
The perpetually disgruntled sense an opportunity and rush to make the most of it. As for the grunted, they sound awkward, defensive, pessimistic, unconvincing. Determined to defend the indefensible to the end, they only hasten the end of this administration's effectiveness.
This single misadventure with the Iranian tarbaby becomes emblematic of the entire presidency, a symbol of "a series of embarrassments that threaten to unravel gains that they have secured over policy has won," to quote a front-page story in the Wall Street Journal.
Reaganphobes move to associate this blunder with their own favorite target — whether it be the administration's policy on Nicaragua, arms control, Star Wars, the budget deficit, agriculture, the 55 mph speed limit, or all of the above. That way, an almost universally regretted misadventure comes to stand for an entire presidency, and a demoralizing part is allowed to become greater than the whole.
The President can put a stop to this, he can end the damage by dismissing those who did it. He can fire his national security adviser, Vice Admiral John Poindexter, and the admiral's Inspector Clouseau, Lt. Col. Oliver North. Few decisions would better serve national security. Reagan can also make it clear that Robert McFarlane, who also had a not-so-fine hand in this affair, really is his former national security adviser. And it wouldn't hurt to fire whoever agreed to write the presi-
Ronald Reagan has a secretary of state and a more than competent one, whose judgment now has been vindicated once again; the president ought to rely on him. If he did it clearly enough and forcefully enough, this episode might remain an episode, and not the hallmark of another presidency that failed.
The Reagan presidency could be saved even without that kind of help from the President. The most trenchant critics of this single episode in a Persian market could point out that it was, after all, a single episode. If a battle has been lost, there is still the war to be won against terrorism and many another danger this president has recognized, from the Stalinsatz in Nicaragua to those whose idea of arms control can be summed up as Peace Through Weakness. The Republic cannot afford another unravelled presidency, another leader lost to Carteritis. It is time to stop this.
The macho sport of man-hunting
Give the hunted a real chance
An animal lover phoned this morning to express her disgust with a story she read in the sports section of the paper where I work.
"It ruined my morning," she said,
"and I wish you would write something about it."
Mike Royko Chicago Tribune
the story she objected to concerned hunting. It told how an Illinois man, out looking for a deer to kill, saw what he thought was an enormous doe.
He fired his rifle, and the bullet tore through the creature's throat, but when the hunter reached the fallen beast he was shocked to find that it was an elk.
What made this incident newsworthy, of course, was that it's unusual for someone who intends to slay a deer to wind up killing a 700-pound elk instead. At least that's what I think made it newsworthy.
It also turned out that the elk had already been wounded in the leg, presumably by another hunter, and had been limping and bleeding before the fatal slug found its throat.
"I read it and then I cried. The thought of that beautiful animal roaming free, hurting nobody, and managing to survive on its own: all the highways, the towns, the developments, the things man creates. But it somehow managed to find enough natural shelter to live on its own.
But the woman who called found nothing of merit in the story.
"Now this beautiful harmless thing is dead. And for what? Because somebody gets pleasure out of killing. It makes me sick, and I wish you would write something about how
I told her no. I couldn't do that, because I don't share her views on hunting.
barbaric hunters are."
Although I don't kill animals myself, I've never seen any reason to criticize people who get pleasure out of blasting a hole in the vital organs of some soft-eyed, grass-nibbling creature of the forest.
Standing over the bleeding body of a deer or a rabbit doesn't appeal to me, but who am I to criticize someone who finds killing animals to be an uplifting experience?
In fact, I've long thought that hunting opportunities should be expanded. And I've developed a plan that would provide hunters with more recreational activities and possibly alleviate one of society's most serious problems.
I've long thought that hunting opportunities should be expanded. And I've developed a plan that would provide hunters with more recreational activities and possibly alleviate one of society's most serious problems.
It would work this way:
As we all know, hunters say that they perform a valuable service by thinning out the population of deer and other creatures. If they didn't go out there and blast away, we'd soon have deer all over our front lawns.
We also know that society has an overpopulation problem in its prisons. We have far more dangerous criminals than we have prison cells. This has resulted in judges ordering
criminals to be released early just to make room for a new batch.
So I propose that we offer certain criminals — those on death row or facing life sentences — a chance to escape execution or have their sentences reduced.
They could volunteer to be hunted.
A heavily wooded area would be set
aside for this purpose: Lots of
ravines, underbrush, maybe a cave
A hunter would then apply for a license and pay a fee. He would enter the hunting grounds alone and stalk his prey — another man, who happens to be a dangerous and desperate criminal. The hunter would have his rifle and 20 rounds of ammunition.
To make it truly sporting, though, the prey would not be defenseless, as are the deer and that lone elk.
No, the criminal would also have a high-powered rifle, but only one bullet
Ah, think of the sport of it, the tension, the suspense, the adrenaline flowing. You, the hunter, creeping through the brush, darting from tree to tree, looking for your prey — a dangerous criminal.
That's real hunting, and with the added thrill of knowing that your prey might be up in a tree, sighting on you and waiting for you to get just a few steps closer so he can blow a hole in your throat.
You have to admit, that's real macho stuff. If you get him, you have a trophy for your rec room wall that 'll be a real conversation piece.
And you'll have thinned out the prison population.
Of course, he just might get lucky and zap you with his one bullet, but I would think that would be a chance a real hunter would be willing to take. What the heck, you can get killed crossing the street, right?
So I hope that the appropriate authorities would give some thought to my plan. Many states could raise a lot of revenue in man-hunting license fees.
I'm sure that if hunters had an opportunity to take part in this kind of mally sport, they would rush to buy them. It can cost thousands, or the tens of thousands.
Well, maybe two or three.
WASHINGTON - Now that Thanksgiving is out of the way, perhaps we can get down to some serious Christmas shopping.
Gift ideas for those with it all
Baffled over what to buy for the proverbial man who has everything? Well, permit me to pass along a few suggestions from Michael Korda, editor at the publishing house Simon & Schuster.
Dick West
UPI Commentary
Korda, as you can see, goes in big for 'n's."
Among other things, he lists a 34-hour day, a "platinum" credit card, a "personalized parking place," a "perfect" secretary and a "permanent" brass nameplate.
Anyway, a platinum credit card should take care of the man who has everything. But what about the kid who has anything?
Probably you are shopping for some children who already have been given portable tape players, television sets and computers. Have you considered they might like to find a gift-wrapped rechargeable battery under the Christmas tree?
I can tell you from bitter experience there is no greater disappointment than getting the battery-powered device you asked for, only to discover that of 'Santa has forgotten the batteries.
The Phillips Home Products company of Akron, Ohio, a do-it-yourself manufacturer, estimates that Americans spend about $2 billion a year on batteries.
Except on Christmas morning when all the neighborhood places that might sell batteries are closed
oy giving the kid a rechargeable battery, you could become a bigger Christmas morn hero or heroin than if you shelled out for one of the billion-odd battery-powered products now on the market.
And the children on your list don't have to worry about it running down. All they need do is plug it into a wall socket and — preset! — the appliance is as good as new
But maybe the kid who has everything already has a battery recharger. Kids nowadays weren't hiding behind the door or out somewhere buying batteries when the brains were passed out. It doesn't take them long to figure out their stupid parents likely will forget one essential ingredient.
In that case, maybe you would like to gift-wrap a robot.
According to a magazine article I saw earlier this year, the robot industry "in is a depressed state." mainly because many potential customers now realize that factory automation isn't the answer to all their problems.
then you should be able to pick up a robot fairly cheap. Particularly a used robot.
If children on your list became the first kids on the block to own a used robot, or an automated factory, it could help prepare them for later life.
I mean, if they fined $100 million or so for stock market "insider" trading, they could instruct the perfect secretary to take it out of petty cash.