Re: [ga] ICANN loses $4.6 mil

["Jeffrey A. Williams" <jwkckid1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

George and all,

  You bring up a good point George.  Further it is amazing to me
that ICANN as a public service provider and contracted to
the USG via the MOU, is investing in any form of financial
instrument what so ever.  Having cash reserves is a good thing
for ICANN to have, to be sure, but using the free markets to
gain that cash reserves as a 501 ( C-3 ) organization shows the
gross incompetence and is even more emphasized by the fact
that they allowed those investments to go down so far before
stopping the bleeding!  >:(  Purely foolish and demonstrating
poor judgment as well as irresponsible behavior.

George Kirikos wrote:

> Hello,
>
> --- Danny Younger <dannyyounger@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > On the ICANN Finance Public Dashboard a note hidden within the first
> > drop-down arrow on the left indicates "The large variance to budget
> > is due to investment losses of $4.6 mil".
> >
> > http://forms.icann.org//idashboard/public/
> >
> > One would think that a more expansive explanation would be in order.
>
> My guess would be this is a result of the USD $25 million that ICANN
> decided to put into "investments". In the annual report at:
>
> http://www.icann.org/en/annualreport/annual-report-2008-en.pdf
>
> Page 96 of the PDF shows that they had already gone down to $24,773,000
> by the end of June 2008. Of course, the markets quickly deteriorated
> further after that date. Page 98 of the PDF shows the purchase of
> investments for $25 million. Pages 100 through 103 also mention the
> investment policy, with Note 4 on page 103 showing the allocation
> between stocks and bonds. There's no reason for ICANN to carry large
> reserves, given that it taxes registrants on an ongoing basis and thus
> has access to as much funds as it desires.
>
> This is yet another area of ICANN incompetence, going outside their
> "area of expertise"** to speculate in the financial markets. Of course,
> no one at ICANN will be held accountable for this, although you might
> want to write an article for CircleID or other venues to spread the
> word to more people as to how ICANN is mismanaging the money of domain
> registrants.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> George Kirikos
> http://www.leap.com/
>
> P.S. **I use "area of expertise" in quotes, given anyone that their
> major expertise is international travel and parties, rather than
> anything productive.

Regards,

Spokesman for INEGroup LLA. - (Over 284k members/stakeholders strong!)
"Obedience of the law is the greatest freedom" -
   Abraham Lincoln
"YES WE CAN!"  Barack ( Berry ) Obama

"Credit should go with the performance of duty and not with what is
very often the accident of glory" - Theodore Roosevelt

"If the probability be called P; the injury, L; and the burden, B;
liability depends upon whether B is less than L multiplied by
P: i.e., whether B is less than PL."
United States v. Carroll Towing  (159 F.2d 169 [2d Cir. 1947]
===============================================================
Updated 1/26/04
CSO/DIR. Internet Network Eng. SR. Eng. Network data security IDNS.
div. of Information Network Eng.  INEG. INC.
ABA member in good standing member ID 01257402 E-Mail
jwkckid1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
My Phone: 214-244-4827