Blood sucking ambulance chasing lawyers

I'm no fan of class action lawsuits. For example, I just got two unsolicited e-mails concerning a settlement in the DRAM lawsuit and I honestly don't know if it's spam or pfishing or legit. It's entrepreneurial sue-age, and that's not a good thing.

But expensed options is a serious issue. If the company just prints stock to cover these options grants, the company dilutes the stock holders. Expensing options, while not yet a required practice, ought to be precisely because it makes the back-dating issue moot. Back-date if you like, but then you have to enter the price difference between the back-date and the actual date. And then the shareholders can decide how much they like that game.

I am starting to think that it may take an Enron to make the point about expensing options, and that in turn may result in a legislative overreaction like Sarbanes-Oxley. It would seriously suck if it turned out to be Apple, but when you hear people talk about the problem of non-expensed options, Apple is an example.

Honestly, the whole stock options game in the tech industry is a mess. It's simply a way for companies to get people below upper management level to work for less than they are worth and keep them from evaluating opportunities (as vesting time nears). And for upper management, it's a gutless way to mask what the companies are actually paying them, because big salaries aren't socially acceptable. The only shareholders who give a crap about excessive salaries are the public employees pension funds anyway, and they whine about enough stuff that a company could safely ignore them on salaries.

The thing I fail to understand about Apple with regard to this issue is that they just seem to be reacting and delaying. They could have solved it earlier this year by changing their policy and restating their earnings while simultaneously hiring their special counsel to look into the mess. Now with the uncertainty, they just invite a whole line of lawyers.