Sleaze-o-nomics

With nary a peep on the sacred continent itself, and never to be heard over the bleating about Wal-Mart, the same old secretive practice of hiding the weenie:

Just when Airbus looked to be finally flying high with a new management structure and a new order from British Airways, dark clouds began to gather Wednesday with the opening stages of a major insider trading investigation.

Et encore avec le winky-winky, there are sure to be mentions of it having "shades of Enron", but definately not the fact that even before there was an Enron and for time immemorial, European business executives would steal anything that wasn't bolted down, no matter what harm it did to the economy, and the very society they lived in.

the investigation will focus on 21 executives across the three companies involved, who apparently sold EADS shares with insider knowledge that mounting delays and manufacturing problems in 2005 were becoming insurmountable. When the damage became public in mid-June 2006, after the executives had allegedly completed their stock sales, it caused EADS' share price to fall 26% in one day.

The irony is that the people who are screwed by this are mainly small investors and retirees in Europe, and that more than half the reporting on this item comes from outside the "magical kingdom of Shengen."