Enron #2

1.) The S.P.E. (Special Purpose Entities) gives company owned contracts to a subsidiary of the company which allows the company to borrow from the banks without having to pay interest.

2.) If the assets given to the SPEs didn't make money, Enron could pay the SPEs back with Enron stock, essentially getting money without having to give collateral.

3.) The information does count as a mystery because Enron's list of SPEs was public information and included in Enron's annual report.

4.) Downloaded is a reference to public knowledge, but scrounged up gives the impression of massive amounts of digging and having to find hidden information.

5.) Enron being the largest company of its type at the time, had thousands upon thousands of papers of financial documents so sorting and analyze them all would take years. Andrew Fastow was the CFO of Enron as was largely responsible for all the actions the company took.

6.) Information changes purpose and value over time

7.) By understanding that the situation was a mystery, if forced them to value all information given in oder to deduce the existence of the Nazi rockets.

8.) The detection of prostate cancer is preventative and therefore requires all the information one can get. Treatment however is very different. It requires specific problems to be addressed.

9.) Spies used to be required because of the secrecy shared between he two countries, but now that everything is public that IA on both sides can't even begin to process it all.

10.) Inman believes that we need people who understand the culture of a country to gather information as they would be more privy to the subtle nuances that someone not from that culture would not be able to pick up on.