Loading ...A normal person might assume that the Enron scandal was a teachable moment for everyone in business and finance. Those who do wrong, no matter how high up the corporate ladder, will be punished—that was supposed to be the moral of the Enron story. Skilling’s sentence was intended to be a repudiation of the do-whatever-it-took-to-win Enron Way. Screw your colleague, who was just a pussy or a whiner or a weakling anyway. Lie to investors, who were dodos if they didn’t take the time to study SEC filings. Demand ever-bigger bonuses because earning more and more and more was the only way to keep score. Who cared whether the whole state of California went dark thanks to market manipulation by Enron traders: you were Enron, and you were entitled. Bully the regulators and the credit rating agencies—they were idiots who didn’t understand money. Buy politicians—they always had a hand out anyway! Rig the system in your favor in every way possible, and humiliate, bully, or just plain stomp (figuratively) on anyone who griped that Enron didn’t play fair.
That’s the world Jeff Skilling will be returning to: the one in which most of the wealth in this country has been transferred to the kind of person he used to be, one in which the President of the United States continues to oversee the transfer of even more riches to his pals, while ordinary folks try to figure out why they can’t afford to retire and their kids are saddled with massive debt for college educations.
There’s already been one welcome-home party for Skilling by former Enron execs, and there will most likely be more. They know, and he knows, that he was always ahead of his time.
https://www.texasmonthly.com/news/jeff-skilling-enron-return/