Asymmetrical Information

AI: Your One-stop Shop for Economic News of the War

Swen Swenson of Coyote at the Dogshow forwards this interesting link: seems Boots & Coots, the company that put out the Kuwait oil fires during Gulf I, is the target of a "shadowy group of Texas oilmen", incorporated in Panama, who are attempting to perform what we used to call a "reverse LBO" in banking: lend or buy the company's debt, and then pull the assets debt free out of bankruptcy. Halliburton does business with them, so their name is mentioned too.

Brace yourselves for a raft of conspiracy theories, all silly. People will no doubt speculate that Cheney or Bush gave the "shadowy oilmen" some insider information -- as if they needed it, when the President was saying that he was going to invade Iraq right on the news, where everyone could hear it. Moreover, the company's been in trouble for years, apparently due to an oil-well fire deficit and some piss-poor management. And no matter how shadowy these oilmen are (though if they're so mysterious, how come we know they're Texas oilmen?), their numbers do not include the President, his family, or the VP & same, because their assets are held in blind trusts.