16-01-2004 23:42									#31
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quote: Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui quote: When Ken Lay is burnt at the stake, then maybe you can open your mouth... Like MtG said: Ken Lay (I've known him casually since the mid-'80s) is a very hands-off type of manager - like it or not, you don't put a lot of scrutiny on CFO's and COO's, most likely because there's an implied issue that if you have to scrutinize those positions extensively, you have the wrong people in them So keep crowing how Lay has to go to jail for a long time or else Bush has gotten him off... we all know this is partisan bashing by you anyway .

Lay should fry, Imran - and with the extent of Enron's frauds and their market manipulation (forget California, that's minor) the organization and it's execs should have been charged under RICO statutes, with several looking at life sentences just like mafiosi. Simply prosecuting them in the "normal" way for white-collar crimes is soft-peddling the whole thing.

All in all, even though these guys didn't get to keep the fraud rolling forever, and they get some nasty publicity and maybe a token of soft country club time, the prosecution of these guys has not been anything even close to a deterrent to other corporate frauds. These guys need to have their DNA filtered from the gene pool, and every dollar attributable to the time period of their criminal venture seized, just like we'd do with some *******s running coke out of Colombia.

The social damage they've done in terms of direct economic effects on their victims, and in terms of the damage to the credibility (such that it is) of the energy and financial markets far exceeds anything from the Arellano-Felix hermanos, or the Gottis, or anything else the Feds traditionally have hardons for.

	17-01-2004 02:50									#32
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The big crime in Enron was not the accounting. It was the smoke and mirrors story in and of itself. It was fluffy, poor thinking. And was advocated by a consulting company that consider itself intellectual and has a nice brand, but does not push for real insight. And the MBA school profs and other consulting firms are even worse.

I remember talking to one of the chem industry practice guys as they were working on Enron-2 type schemes (before Enron fell) and I said, "Why don't we just do normal studies. There are enough conventional business problems to analyze and they are rarely trivial, when you try to really get a quality answer." His response, "We cost too much for that sort of stuff. We have to invent something "new" that will attract people."

Well they invented bullshit.