Word: blackout
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...more or less an encapsulation of what President Bush suggested a while back - makes the easy fixes. Companies must warn employees 30 days before freezing trading in their 401(k) retirement plan accounts - remember those Enron victims? - and company executives would be banned from selling their company stock during blackout periods when workers can't make changes to their 401(k) accounts. As for diversification, it also forces companies that use their own stock to match employees' contributions to allow workers to sell that stock after three years. (Enron's threshold was a penny-pinching...
Unfortunately, this reluctance to release information appears to be the rule rather than the exception for the Bush administration. From a virtual news blackout on the ground in Afghanistan to the administration’s earlier refusal to release many of former President Ronald Reagan’s presidential papers, we find it troubling that Bush and his advisors have so little faith in America’s ability to handle the truth...
...Give 30-days' notice before a blackout period begins - and once it does, forbid senior corporate executives from selling company stock during periods when workers are unable to trade on their plans. A company would also be more liable for what happens to worker investments during the blackout. (Under current law, when 401(k) plans are controlled by workers, employers are not responsible for the result of workers' investment choices. This "safe harbor" would now no longer apply during blackout periods...
...blackout period - oh, that blackout period. It may be a pleasant thought that Ken Lay wouldn't have been able to pay back that billion-dollar loan with company stock during the lockdown. But if Bush really wanted to make things fair for workers and investors, "OK for the sailor" and "OK for the captain," as he put it Friday, he'd make a company halt all trading of its stock - Wall Street too - while a blackout period was on. Then we'd see how often those blackouts occurred - and what happened during them...
...ceased to exist - what's so different about Enron? That company's employees joined a high-flyer and apparently bet it all on high-flying company stock. The company failed - and either none of them saw it coming (though the stock had already been cut in half when the blackout started) or none of them thought the slide would last...