The Smartest Guys in the Room*

Greedily-weedily
Enron's own Kenny-boy
Screwed his employees to
Make himself rich.

Thanks to the jury's forced
Accountability,
Kenny will soon be his
New cellmate's bitch.

This is a little more mean-spirited than double-dactyls really should be. And it's inaccurate. Neither Ken Lay nor Jeff Skilling is going to be sentenced until September, so no one is getting a cellmate any time soon. And, of course, the federal penitentiary to which they are sentenced will likely be of the country club variety. But that's not really the point. The poem is mean-spirited because I find the Enron criminals to be so extraordinarily reprehensible.

The crimes for which Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling were convicted did an enormous amount of harm to Enron employees and investors. (And the employees are thrilled by the convictions.) But I am equally, if not more outraged by the crime for which no one at Enron faced any accountability -- the manufactured California energy crisis, or the rape and pillage of California. I could rant about this at length, but that would undermine the whole trying-to-keep-these-posts-short thing. Suffice it to say that I am quite pleased that Enron's leadership is facing justice for at least some of their crimes. And someday, if anyone ever decides that the American people actually have the right to know who creates national policy, I'd really like to find out if Ken Lay helped create the nation's energy policy back in 2001.

*This is the (partial) title of a book and documentary about Enron's rise and fall.