The Winter Games at Enron

Exciting events include worker fleecing and book cooking.

By: Jon Carroll

The Justice Department recently announced the formation of a "task force" to investigate the blizzard of crimes allegedly committed by Enron, the giant energy trading company with strong ties to both Dick Cheney and George W. Bush.

I am putting up $100 right here, payable to Doctors Without Borders; I am betting that not a single Enron executive will spend a day in jail. Not one, not ever.

Let us remember that Enron executives were part of Dick Cheney's super-secret cabal that formulated the administration's energy policy in the first days of the Bush administration. Transcripts of those meeting have never been released, despite congressional demands for same.

Environmental groups did not attend these meetings. Their presence would have confused the issue.

At the time of the meetings, by their own admission, the Enron executives had been cooking the books for more than three years. Enron acknowledged that it had overstated its profits from 1997 on by $586 million. Since investors depend on profit statements when deciding what to invest in, Enron was in essence raising capital by defrauding investors.

Poor guys rob banks; rich guys "overstate their profits".

Then, in the crucial third quarter of 2001, when Enron finally admitted a $618 million loss and a $1.2 billion loss in shareholder equity, the company prevented its own employees from selling Enron stock invested in 401(k)s. The stock plunged from $83 per share to less than $1 per.

Before that, though, Enron executives managed to unload hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stock. Plus they got bonuses. Not for them the risks and rewards of the free market. They were loyal to a higher standard: Take the money and run.

The last bit strikes even cynical observers as a bit over the top. They screwed their own employees. The last big case investigated by the Justice Department, the Archer Daniels Midland price-fixing scandal, at least did not have that element.

Meantime, and here is the beauty part, the national energy policy formulated by Cheney and his rapacious chums continues. Cheney and Bush are also loyal to a higher standard: What's good for the oil companies is good for the USA.

The administration has shown no interest in reducing consumption. It has stopped funding research into high-mileage cars and put its money instead on fuel cell technology, which is a lovely idea that will probably become practical when all the current oil executives have safely retired.

The astonishing thing is that, despite all the gravitas that has accrued around the president since Sept. 11, he still hasn't grasped one of the key lessons of the war in Afghanistan or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the Middle East is an unstable place.

Our friends in Saudi Arabia are running an ugly dictatorship that is becoming increasingly unstable. It is probable that someday, sooner rather than later, the big pipe will dry up, and our petroleum-based lifestyle will be changed for us.

That won't be fun. If we prepared for it, we could cushion the blow, but that's not in the plans now.

The Bush administration also has a tax plan remarkably similar to the one implemented by Ronald Reagan, the old trickle-down, tax-cuts-for-rich-people, deficit-financing two-step. It didn't work then, and it won't work now.

Here's the reality: big businesses do not use the extra money from tax cuts to "create jobs". They use the money to create bonuses, executive pension plans, grand new office towers. Unemployment rises, the government can't pay for its own welfare plans, and the politicians respond by alleging that the solution for America is for everyone to get a job.

And this time, a lot of tax money will go to the fight on terrorism, leaving even less for everything else. Cut taxes while waging war: only in America.