Wealth & Money Quote by Bernie Ebbers

A banal sentence that, in Bernie Ebbers' mouth, reads like a whole defense strategy compressed into eight words. "Practically" is doing the heavy lifting: it signals sacrifice without admitting recklessness, a hedged confession meant to sound like commitment. And "available" quietly narrows the frame, implying prudence and limits while leaving untouched the bigger question of how that money became available and what obligations sat behind it.

Ebbers, the WorldCom CEO later convicted in one of the defining accounting scandals of the early 2000s, often presented himself as a plainspoken striver caught in forces bigger than him: telecom volatility, market expectations, aggressive growth. This line fits that persona. It's the rhetoric of the hometown booster and the leveraged empire-builder at once. He isn't boasting about wealth; he's selling the image of skin in the game, the leader who believed so much he emptied his pockets. That appeal matters because in corporate scandal narratives, intent is everything. If he can be cast as the believer rather than the schemer, the moral temperature drops.

The subtext is also a tell: using nearly all your "available" money hints at a liquidity crunch, a need to prop up collapsing valuations or meet margin calls - classic symptoms of a business model addicted to constant upward motion. The sentence tries to convert that desperation into virtue. It's a small verbal maneuver with big stakes: turn overextension into dedication, and the audience might forget to ask who paid when the bill finally arrived.