Foaming At The Mouth
"Hangin's Too Good Fer 'Im!"
So last time I wrote, it was to lament the heart attack that claimed the life of a good man too soon. Now it's a heart attck that killed a bad man before he got what was coming to him. Enron founder and predicate felon Ken Lay died last night while awaiting sentencing for the massive fraud that was for a brief time the seventh-largest company in the world.
Lots of people who would only use the business section of the newspaper to line a parrot cage knew about the Dickensian villainies commited by Lay. He lied about the company's profits and financial condition to help keep its stock price aloft, encouraging others to buy shares while quietly converting his into cash as fast as he could. The number of loyal, law-abiding, and innocent employees who saw their retirements evaporate is heartbreaking.
What really hit home for me about all this is that I have spent what amounts to my entire adult life (and several years before that) in the industry that Enron was built upon, commodity trading. Enron started out trading in natural gas and made what amounted to a damn good name for themselves in an honest capacity. But then they got full of themselves, took chances they shouldn't have, and got 'caught up'.
So flashback about seven years ago. I was working at the Board of Trade here in Chicago, owned a seat (membership and trading privileges on trading floor) and was seized by ambition to make my small career into a big one. Meanwhile, all the 'smart people' were saying that I and everyone else I knew was going to be out of work in no time flat. Why? Because the real hotshots over at Enron knew more than we did and discard us as chumps. But everyone who cared to look into Enron couldn't understand how they were doing so well when they seemed to be violating what we knew to be the basic principles of the business. Just the same, the opinion writers said, Enron's numbers tell the tale.
And indeed they did. The career didn't turn out as I had hoped, but neither did all the 'informed opinions' about the line of work I learned from the ground up. Not only did Enron go down in flames, all the people who ran the show were exposed as frauds and the know-it-alls who touted them were shown up as dupes. What's more, the exchange membership I mortgaged my home to buy and was told would soon be worthless paid off like a winning lottery ticket. Even though corporate crooks usually get off with a slap on the wrist or nothing at all, Ken Lay was convicted on every count and faced the rest of his life in prison.
And today I find out his life sentence amounted to a comfy bed at his vacation home in Aspen. Not that seeing him languish behind bars would put food on the tables of the 'little people' whose lives he ruined, I had hoped for vengeance in the here and now. It's nice to have been proven right but you deserved a worse death, you swine.
"Hangin's Too Good Fer 'Im!"
So last time I wrote, it was to lament the heart attack that claimed the life of a good man too soon. Now it's a heart attck that killed a bad man before he got what was coming to him. Enron founder and predicate felon Ken Lay died last night while awaiting sentencing for the massive fraud that was for a brief time the seventh-largest company in the world.
Lots of people who would only use the business section of the newspaper to line a parrot cage knew about the Dickensian villainies commited by Lay. He lied about the company's profits and financial condition to help keep its stock price aloft, encouraging others to buy shares while quietly converting his into cash as fast as he could. The number of loyal, law-abiding, and innocent employees who saw their retirements evaporate is heartbreaking.
What really hit home for me about all this is that I have spent what amounts to my entire adult life (and several years before that) in the industry that Enron was built upon, commodity trading. Enron started out trading in natural gas and made what amounted to a damn good name for themselves in an honest capacity. But then they got full of themselves, took chances they shouldn't have, and got 'caught up'.
So flashback about seven years ago. I was working at the Board of Trade here in Chicago, owned a seat (membership and trading privileges on trading floor) and was seized by ambition to make my small career into a big one. Meanwhile, all the 'smart people' were saying that I and everyone else I knew was going to be out of work in no time flat. Why? Because the real hotshots over at Enron knew more than we did and discard us as chumps. But everyone who cared to look into Enron couldn't understand how they were doing so well when they seemed to be violating what we knew to be the basic principles of the business. Just the same, the opinion writers said, Enron's numbers tell the tale.
And indeed they did. The career didn't turn out as I had hoped, but neither did all the 'informed opinions' about the line of work I learned from the ground up. Not only did Enron go down in flames, all the people who ran the show were exposed as frauds and the know-it-alls who touted them were shown up as dupes. What's more, the exchange membership I mortgaged my home to buy and was told would soon be worthless paid off like a winning lottery ticket. Even though corporate crooks usually get off with a slap on the wrist or nothing at all, Ken Lay was convicted on every count and faced the rest of his life in prison.
And today I find out his life sentence amounted to a comfy bed at his vacation home in Aspen. Not that seeing him languish behind bars would put food on the tables of the 'little people' whose lives he ruined, I had hoped for vengeance in the here and now. It's nice to have been proven right but you deserved a worse death, you swine.
ckdexterhaven:
Yeah, really odd timing on that story. He got the guilty verdict a few weeks back, then this. It's weird how things work out like that. When I first heard about this, I wasn't sure whether to be really sad or or somewhat gleeful. Of coure, in reality it's always sad when someone dies. But this guy is definitely scraping the bottom of the barrell here.
ckdexterhaven:
Mine have been wicked bad as of late. To be totally honest with ya, it didn't really go away, it's still lingering a bit. I'm a ahead of you on the sedation thing, I took a couple NyQuills earlier, which knocked me out for a few hours. Helped a bit. I'm actually not much of of an Alky, just on special occasions. Like days that end in Y. 