When opening Christmas pres ents today, please remember, it’s the thought that counts.
Here are some presents I thought I would buy but didn’t:
• Former Qwest chief executive Joe Nacchio was at the top of my list after being convicted of 19 counts of illegal insider trading this year.
Nacchio claims in his appeal that the judge unfairly prohibited his defense. He was going to argue that the feds went after him because he refused to allow the National Security Administration and other government spooks from the wholesale tapping of Qwest’s phones without a court order.
Nacchio had top security clearances and was perhaps the only telecom executive who stood up for the rights of private citizens at a time when our government abandoned the Constitution.
So for Nacchio, I thought about getting the Agent Action Briefcase by Wild Planet. It features a removable motion alarm that “stops thieves and intruders” and a “special spy scope that lets you spy from far away,” and it shoots darts “to stun enemy spies.” That ought to finally take care of those snooping feds.
• Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told American consumers in 2002 that they could save thousands of dollars a year by taking out adjustable-rate mortgages. Now that he’s no longer Fed chairman and the mortgage industry is imploding, he’s warning that the housing bust could soon turn into a full- blown recession. For Greenspan, I’d like to buy Megatron, the menacing Transformer action figure, with advanced “Automorph Technology.”
• Fort Collins-based New Belgium Brewery had erroneously branded its beer with claims that 100 percent of its energy came from the wind and other renewable energy sources. When Eric Sutherland, a pesky environmentalist, challenged that claim, New Belgium got a restraining order against him.
For using the court system to silence a critic, New Belgium CEO Kim Jordan deserves a lump of coal. No, wait, that’s not environmentally friendly. How about a renewable-energy credit?
• Circuit City, earlier this year, laid off 3,400 of its higher-paid workers and replaced them with folks who were willing to work for less. The Richmond, Va.-based retailer unabashedly called it “a wage- management initiative.”
So how did it work out, stocking stores with lower- paid, less-experienced workers? Circuit City stock has lost 75 percent of its value this year.
CEO Philip Schoonover deserves just about anything from Mattel. And chew on the lead paint, Phil. It might improve your judgment.
• Health-care provider Cig na Corp. denied a liver transplant to a 17-year-old leukemia patient in California. After 150 people recently protested outside its office in Glendale, Calif., Cigna officials apparently got nervous and reversed their decision. Unfortunately, the patient, Nataline Sarkis yan, died a few hours later.
Cigna CEO H. Edward Hanway’s nearly $30 million in annual compensation makes him a hundred times more expensive than a liver transplant. I’d like to buy him the game Operation, by Milton Bradley. Maybe he’ll be able to score a “bread basket” for another 1,000 points.
• Whole Foods CEO John Mackey admitted earlier this year that he habitually ranted on a Yahoo message board using a pseudonym. Pretending to be just another investor, he blasted Whole Foods critics and even defended his haircut. “I like Mackey’s haircut,” he wrote in April 2000. “I think he looks cute!”
Mackey deserves the Totally Me Glitz & Glam Cosmetic Case, exclusively from Toys “R” Us. And perhaps, as a stocking stuffer, a jar of Dippity-Do.
• Angelo Mozilo, CEO of Countrywide Financial Corp., unloaded about $145 million worth of his stock just before its price nose-dived amid the subprime-mortgage meltdown. Now, he’s demanding government help to ease the deepening liquidity crisis in the mortgage market. Mozilo should get the same bill of goods he’s been selling everybody else: The Barbie Dream House. And a Malibu Barbie to go with his perpetual tan.
• Qwest’s new CEO, Ed Mueller, is sure having a tough start after his predecessor, Dick Notebaert, saved the company from bankruptcy and retired after hitting a big plateau. Qwest stock was nearly $8.50 when Mueller took the job in mid-August. Now it’s trading around $7 — and that’s after Mueller announced his strategic plan, which includes a stockholders dividend for the first time in six years. I think I’m going to buy Mueller a series of Tom Cruise videos called “Mission Impossible.”
• Merrill Lynch CEO Stan O’Neal and Citigroup CEO Charles Prince were ousted after the mortgage meltdown reduced their companies’ holdings by billions of dollars. O’Neal walked away with $161.5 million, and Prince left with $95 million. For them, I’d like to get Liar’s Dice, by Endless Games, which boasts on its box, “The truth never counts when you’re playing.”
• Bob Nardelli got paid $210 million to quit his job as CEO of Home Depot — a job for which he’d already been paid hundreds of millions for a lackluster performance. Now he’s CEO of privately held Chrysler, and he is cutting back on all of those highly overpaid autoworkers we keep reading about. The perfect gift for Bob? How about the Hot Wheels Blast and Crash Track Set?
• Ed Mattar, convicted on fraud charges stemming from the 1998 collapse of Boulder- based BestBank, and former Denver city attorney and Judge Larry Manzanares, accused of stealing a laptop computer, each did something astonishing this year. They killed themselves to avoid criminal sanctions. For them, I would like to have purchased a dice game by Parker Brothers called Don’t Go to Jail. I bet they would have been good at it.
• Gov. Bill Ritter told us he was a proponent of open process and inclusion at the beginning of his term. But then he very imperiously signed an executive order permitting state workers to form bargaining partnerships. Colorado business leaders, long wary of unions, are still simmering over the glaring lack of process and inclusion in this decision. But I found a card game I think the governor would like. It’s called Kings in the Corner.
• Former Adelphia chairman John Rigas, 82, is a guy we should have forgotten by now — along with Enron’s Jeff Skilling, WorldCom’s Bernie Ebbers and Tyco’s Dennis Kozlowski — but Rigas did not report to prison until August.
I wish I could buy a Christmas tree for Rigas, who bankrupted his cable company, and fly it to him on a private jet.
Rigas, often a generous man with other people’s money, once did this for his daughter, Ellen. He put a tree on Adelphia’s jet and flew it to her in New York. She didn’t like it, so he flew her another one. Prosecutors claimed these flying trees cost Adelphia shareholders $6,000.
Not having my own shareholders to fleece, I can’t afford that kind of loot. I’ll just have to wait a few more days and air-mail him some Christmas- tree mulch.
Al Lewis’ column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Respond to him at , 303-954-1967 or alewis@denverpost.com.
