Blogging from the Tequileria at Dulles airport in DC, waiting for my much anticipated return home.
I was thrilled to see, just before I left the hotel, that Enron crooks and the destroyers of peoples lives, Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling, were convicted of multiple counts of fraud and conspiracy. Their crimes epitomize the impact of an immoral and narcissistic, and dare I say sociopathic, view of the world and other people.
It’s been almost five years since the collapse of Enron, five years too many of these crooks living lives not behind bars. They remain free on bond, despite the fact that their crimes destroyed the future of so many people who had worked and invested in a company that was being looted right from under their noses.
For that alone these men should be remanded to prison as they appeal an obviously righteous verdict. The good news is the convictions should put them behind bars ultimately for the rest of their lives. I’ve lost so much trust in the justice system, so I won’t get excited until I see them dragged away. The capper would be seeing those two men do a Jim Bakker and cry like babies as they’re taken away. However it happens, that will indeed be a day to rejoice.
Jury Convicts Enron’s Skilling and Lay
HOUSTON, May 25 — A federal jury today convicted former Enron chairman Kenneth L. Lay of each of the six counts with which he was charged and convicted his protege Jeffrey K. Skilling of 19 of 28 counts, holding the top executives accountable for fraud on their watch.
Now the two men, who together invested close to $70 million in their defense, face the possibility of spending the rest of their lives in prison and living in history as the ringleaders of a fraud at a company whose name became synonymous with accounting tricks and rule-breaking…
Enron’s bankruptcy filing cost thousands of workers their jobs, spooked investors into doubting the integrity of the stock market and spurred lawmakers to enact the most significant changes to corporate practices in more than 70 years.
That’s right–$70 million dollars they spent defending themselves. The two men who left thousands jobless and hundreds penniless. This is like allowing a bank robber to use the money from a robbery to pay for his lawyers. That was money ultimately taken from and owed to investors. At the very least the government should have frozen a great deal of their personal funds as civil suits are still pending. Let’s hope some is left for the victims, while the Lay and Skilling families can reap what their men have sown on others–poverty and fear of the future.
UPDATE 5/26:
The Feds are moving now to seize assets. Even after their obscene $70 million in defense costs, they apparently still have $62 million worth of assets to seize. Pigs.
It’s an interesting world we live in. After Richard Scrushy walked, I really was afraid that Lay would too, if his lawyers were smart and they studied the Healthsouth case. Evidently the Enron jury was smarter. I’m not at all sure what to make of all of it.
I have not followed the legal machinations closely, but the few defense efforts I know of have consisted of, “I didn’t do anything wrong and didn’t know anyone else was doing anything wrong.” So — who was running the company if that was true? Not surprising to me that they were found guilty. I hope penalties include making them liquidate every last thing they have and putting the proceeds back into some sort of pension fund for those employees who lost everything.
Remember the simple facts that the Enron crimes were under Clinton’s watch and their prosecution and conviction were under Bush’s
Lay and Skilling Convicted: Ongoing Reaction
From CNN:Skilling was found guilty on 19 counts of conspiracy, fraud, false statements and insider trading. He was found not guilty on eight counts of insider trading. Lay was found guilty on all six counts of conspiracy and fraud.Quick Many
The blogosphere talks about the Enron verdicts
I’ll be keeping track of what other blogs are saying about the Ken Lay/Jeff Skilling verdicts here. If you spot a thoughtful post related to the verdicts that’s not already here, e-mail me. I’ll post new ones at the top….
It’s worth mentioning that all the people who bought Enron stock thought they were going to make big money. As WC Fields used to say: “You can’t cheat an honest man.” IMO, they were victims of their own expectations.
The truth is that the real villains of the piece are is the legal profession itself. Remember what Sir Thomas Moore said of his own profession…”they are of a people whose profession it is to disguise matters”
Sorry about the assault of such an assembly of professions there, for I could not help myself.
Although the MSM gave Enron the most coverage it was the smaller of the big frauds aided and abetted by AA. Almost twice as big was MCI . Bernie got 25 years for that; AA was not tried as the Enron trial effective killed them.(neither MCI nor Enron mad a profit after 1995 even though AA certified $billions of profits; there was a reason they paid no dividend – *they really had NO proft from which to pay!*) Using Bernie as a yardstick these guys should get no more than 13 years. But most were unaware of the MCI fraud and think Enron was much worse so if the judge is part of most he will give them more than Bernie got; even though his crime was much worse. AA hellped many other crooks lie about how profitable they were 10 years ago. Even CPA’s can be bribed!
“Remember the simple facts that the Enron crimes were under Clinton’s watch and their prosecution and conviction were under Bush’s”
Funny how the MSM always leaves that little nugget out of the details. That’s where the Devil is, I hear.
Bobster,
Let’s not forget the current President often referred to Lay as “Kenny-boy†and contributed $122,500 to his Texan governor’s campaign. Lay, also, created Bush’s deregulation on the electricity markets with Enron donating $50,000 to the Bush campaign in 1999 and $550,025 in the 2000 election. The GOP received $1.5 million as soft money and Lay, personally, tossed $400,000 as hard & soft money into funding.
As additional “giftsâ€, Lay added $5,000 to the recount in Florida, and $300,000 to the inauguration in 2001.
In case, you doubt my intentions in writing this, I am not a Democrat. I am an independent and I believe it is time for all American’s to leave their parties, initiate election reform, and vote strictly on the voting records of their politicians rather than their commercials and hype.
I don’t know about the rest of you but I want my country back. I want my voice and best interests to be addressed rather than the control and ownership of corporate puppets that both parties are guilty of supporting.
And yet, despite throwing all that money at Bush, it wasn’t enough to keep him out of jail! That says something, doesn’t it?
Too bad he wasn’t a friend of Bill Clinton’s instead – that seemed to come with an obligatory “get out of jail free” card.
It is reprehensible to assign a poltical blame to this idiocy from Enron. I know that there is this huge impetus in the MSM to say, “See? Theys from Texas! Just like Chimpy McBushitler!” This is the Anti-Maines argument, and it is just as dumb as the orginal statement.
It seems rather loaded with schadenfreude to be celebrating the takedown of a multi-billion dollar company that ruined countless lives, even if it did spawn a Playboy Pictorial. Oh wait, that was a bug, not a feature.
The Enron scandal was not a good thing. They were not the smartest person in the room. They did cost a lot of people a huge amount of money that would have been used for things like retirement or reinvesting if it had not been squandered on “Get Rich Quick!” schemes writ large. The fact that there are numerous people seeming to give each other psychic high-fives over bringing down this company is as disgusting and tone-deaf as “Screw ‘Em” Kos and his comment about the security contractors and Iraqi bridges.
In other words: We all lost on this one, no one came out good.
Sadam and other world leaders of the islamofacist persuation spent great resources counterfiting U. S. currency to undercut our economy.
May be we should have these talented money munipulators do what they can to plunder the funds of various enemy enteties to break their backs and pay back the victoms. A little islamo-coldwar booty.
Thanks for the sweeping generalization, Just Another Richard. It’s the sort of thing people say about lawyers right up until they actually need one. How exactly is the legal profession “to blame” for this? Doesn’t saying that actually relieve Lay and Skillings of their own responsibility for their crimes? And, er, wasn’t it the lawyers of the US Justice Department that just convicted them?
Sorry to sound defensive, and most of the time I’m the first person to make lawyer jokes, but to smear the whole profession because of these schmucks strikes me not only as out of line, but again, as letting the criminals off the hook.
As much as I love seeing Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling get convicted, we must remember there were more than a few Enron employees who chose to ignore the warning signs that Enron was heading down the drain. I saw a television show shortly after the Enron situation broke where the host interviewed a husband and wife who were “poor victims” of Enron. Turns out they CHOSE to ignore the shaky stock price because they believed the stock would go higher. Is that Lay and Skilling’s fault? Not from where I sit.
So, please remember than, although Lay and Skilling are lying bags of scum, they aren’t completely to blame for people losing their life savings. There was plenty of bad investment thinking and horrible decisions to go around.
I have absolutely no sympathy for thieves.
As an investor, Enron always smelled bad to me, from the beginning. How can you trade in a commodity that has no free market price and is totally govt controlled? It was a dumb idea, and anyone who bought it was a fool. As I remember, Clinton touted Enron’s “success” as part of his “economic boom” caused by his tax increases.
Well Enron did give $$$ to the GOP and to the DNC. However, the Bush donations didn’t save Lay and Shilling, so your premise and complaint and latent accusation kind of fades away.
I hate poltical contributions to politicians.
Here is my 4 point, SIMPLE, plan to fix the political process.
1.) Ban all political financial contributions from corps, PACs, special interest groups, unions and 527s. The only ones who can contribute to financing the process would be individual voters. This kills the influence of lobbys
2.) To obtain a radio/tv broadcast license, all radio and tv stations must give free air time for political announcements in an election cycle. This kills the need for money and the need for constant fundraising instead of governing
3.) Put an individual campaign contribution limit of 30 times the average individual donation. If that is $1,000, then the most you can donate is $30,000. This gives the average guy the ability to sell his boat and give a bunch of money to his candidate or party but it freezes out the George Soros’ of the world.
4.) Have a 2 term limit on all elected offices, just like the President. This kills the perpetual ruling class.
With these 4 acts, you dry up the need for and source of vast campaign spending, you focus the politicians attention to whom they should focus on – the voters in their district/state and you end perpetual political dynasties and the machines that run them.
I see no change until those 4 things happen.
Bob
Bobster,
The problem with your ideas is that, well, to be blunt, they haven’t worked when tried before.
Reverse order: Term limits here in California are a disaster. The politcal machines choose their candidates. You get wacko loons of both stripes running, thanks to political influence of the lobbies and the party machines.
Campaign financing is poltical speech. Limits on spending is limiting poltical speech.
Forcing TV, Radio and Newspapers to give up revenue is a BAD idea. This starts to become way too much like regulating the content. (Fox news only runs liveral adds from 2Am to 3 AM…while CBS runs conservatives in the same time slot).
Finally, remember knives cut both ways. As much as we loathe unions and bad corporatiosn getting involved with politics, we want the good corporations and PACs to ahve influence. Think Tammy objects to the NRA funding some condidates?
Finally, Bobster, your SIMPLE ideas require more government itnervention. That is the antithesis of simple. Government will always mess things up. The simplest thing would be to remove the governement entirely, and require total transparency. No matter who donates money, they have to be identified and the amount donated. Then the internet and what’s left of the MSM can see who is giving money to whom.
1, 2 and 3 there are unconstitutional, Bobster. Number 4 wouldn’t make a difference: term limits just erode institutional memory and make politicians jump from one office to the next.
Thanks for your comments. I know my points are idealistic but until the system is changed so that politicians do not have to court big money from corporations to pay for ad buys then the voter is NOT going to be primary in their minds. At this point, professional politicians are focused on lobbys, then the party and then the voter.
1. In the electoral process, the most important feature should be the individual citizen voter – not a financial/political abstract. A PAC or a corporation can’t vote, so they should have no influence over an electon. If all the employees of a company or members of a union or a profession want to vote the same way and if they all INDIVIDUALLY want to financially support a candidate, then more power to them. If a PAC or a 527 wants to try to influence voters, then fine – but I still believe they should not be able to offer financial contributions. The right to vote is with the voter, the choice to contribute should be his alone.
If a candidate can’t get money from a special interest, then the power of lobbys dries up,
2.) Since the airwaves are a regulated public resource, the government can set standards and requirements for a license. It serves little purpose for a station to have a public affairs program at 2 AM on Sundays and think that allows them to deserve a license. Their cost for having a license should be being a positive part of the system. Donate the airtime, consider it a cost of doing business. Get a tax break for it. If you dry up a major part of campaign costs, then politicians can focus on governing instead of perpetual fundraising.
3.) “political free speech” is more limited by McCain-Feingold than by my suggestion. Let the individual have almost unlimited leeway to support who they want – just cut out the George Soros infliuence.
4.) again, we don’t need people like Kennedy in office for 4 + decades. 8 -12 years is enough for any of these guys. we don’t need a perpetual ruling class. don’t get me started on the tradition of Congress giving committee leadership positions to people, just because they have not been voted out by the districts.
It burns my butt to see guys Like Joe Biden, who only got 135,000 votes from leftwing Delaware be in a National leadership position just because of a party rule. The US didn’t vote him or Specter or any of the rest of those blowhards into a ‘shadow presidency”. Their committee position is more of a party appointment rather than a vote of the people.
Maybe my ideas will never come true but I know the present situation will not change until they do