[SOC] Breaking news

[Bill Cunningham]

>
> REMAINING U.S. CEOs MAKE A BREAK FOR IT.  San Antonio, Texas (Reuters)
>
> Unwilling to wait for their eventual indictments, the 10,000 remaining
CEOs
> of public U.S. companies made a break for it yesterday, heading for the
> Mexican border, plundering towns and villages along the way, and writing
the
> entire rampage off
> as a marketing expense.  "They came into my home, made me pay for my own
TV,
> then double-booked the revenues," said Rachel Sanchez of Las Cruces, just
> north of ElPaso.  "Right in front of my daughters."
>
> Calling themselves the CEOnistas, the chief executives were first spotted
> last night along the Rio Grande River near Quemado, where they bought each
> of the town's 320 residents by borrowing against pension fund gains.  By
> late this morning, the CEOnistas had arbitrarily inflated Quemado's
> population to 960, and declared a 200 percent profit for the fiscal second
> quarter.
>
> This morning, the outlaws bought the city of Waco, transferred its
> underperforming areas to a private partnership, and sent a bill to
> California for $4.5 billion.  Law enforcement officials and disgruntled
> shareholders riding posse were noticeably frustrated.
>
> "First of all, they're very hard to find because they always stand behind
> their numbers, and the numbers keep shifting," said posse spokesman Dean
> Levitt.  "And every time we yell 'Stop in the name of the shareholders!',
> they shout back 'You'll never audit me alive!' and refer us to investor
> relations.  I've been on the phone all damn morning."
>
> The pursuers said they have had some success, however, by preying on a
> common executive weakness.  "Last night we caught about 24 of them by
> disguising one of our female officers as a CNBC anchor," said U.S. Border
> Patrol spokesperson Janet Lewis. "It was like moths to a flame."
>
> Among former and current CEOs apprehended with this method were Computer
> Associates' Sanjay Kumar, Adelphia's John Rigas, Enron's Ken Lay, Joseph
> Nacchio of Qwest, Joseph Berardino of Arthur Andersen, and every Global
> Crossing CEO since 1997.
> ImClone Systems' Sam Waksal and Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco were not allowed
to
> join the CEOnistas as they have already been indicted.
>
> So far, about 50 chief executives have been captured, including Martha
> Stewart, who was detained south of El Paso where she had cut through a
> barbed-wire fence at the Zaragosa border crossing off Highway 375.  "She
> would have gotten away, but she was stopping motorists to ask fo marzipan
> and food coloring so she could make edible snowman place settings, using
the
>
> cut pieces of wire for the arms," said Border Patrol officer Jennette
> Cushing.  "We put her in cell No. 7, because the morning sun really adds
> texture to the stucco walls."
>
> While some stragglers are believed to have successfully crossed into
Mexico,
> Cushing said the bulk of the CEOnistas have
> holed themselves up at the Alamo.  "No, not the fort, the car rental place
> at the airport," she said.  "They're rotating all the tires on the
minivans
> and accounting for each change as a sale.