Mark Steyn is one of my favorite writers; he’s very British in his communication, which I always enjoy. Naturally I was quite interested in his comments about Conrad Black, in which he mentioned Enron:
As to white-collar crime, what about the one type of white-collar crime that goes entirely unpunished? For an accounting fraud of $567 million, Enron’s executives went to jail, and its head guy died there. For an accounting fraud ten times that size, the two Democrat hacks who headed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Franklin Raines and Jamie Gorelick, walked away with a combined taxpayer-funded payout of $116.4 million. Fannie and Freddie are two of the largest businesses in America, but they’re exempt from SEC disclosure rules and Sarbanes-Oxley “corporate governance” burdens, and so in 2008, unlike Enron, WorldCom or any of the other reviled private-sector bogeymen, they came close to taking down the entire global economy.
Except for calling Enron a fraud, I agree wholeheartedly with Steyn’s comments. I’ve pointed out numerous times when the government claims the private sector is doing something that it is doing to a much greater degree (case in point: We Owe Andy Fastow A Huge Apology). It makes one think that perhaps the government is not being quite as consistent as it should be.
On the other hand, I had to roll my eyes at this comment left by someone calling himself “Tex Paine”:
CORRECTION: Enron founder and Chairman Ken Lay died of a heart attack before his conviction. CEO Jeff Skilling is still in prison, though his “honest services” conviction was also overturned.
The details, if anyone cares: Jeff Skilling resigned as CEO as Enron began cratering. Whereupon longtime CEO Ken Lay became CEO again. So, technically, Lay was CEO when he died. But he’d become a figurehead for Skilling. See The Smartest Guys in the Room.
Or how about you read the court transcripts, the 10ks, 8ks, and analyst comments? How about you look for yourself what the statements said? How about you watch the analyst video?
Seriously? Smartest Guys In The Room? This is America. We can do better than Smartest Guys In the Room.
I’ll leave the Enron comments to you – but as for Lord Black, do you realize the initial SEC Report that accused him of conducting a “$600 million kleptocracy…”, although his sole remaining fraud conviction was for a value of $600,000. Sure, that’s still a lot of money – but only one one-thousandth of what grabbed headlines.
Also, some media outlets reported that Lord Black told the judge “he was a changed man…” Rubish! He has repeatedly turned down any sort of bartering with the prosecution to reduce his sentence as long as admitted some responsibility. He remains undaunted! And that alone, if nothing else, is something of a marvel.
I have no idea why your comment went into my spam queue, David. Yes, I admire Lord Black quite a bit. And his ordeal is a shame – it has many similarities to Enron and is a disgrace.