[I thought economists didn't believe in the soul? Oh, and Fritz Hollings can redeem himself by telling CSpan viewers "that, yes, FedEx workers need and have the right to a union just like UPS!", senile bastard pile of frog crap.]
Gloom as Kenneth Lay slips off the hook Enron man 'adds years' to inquiry by pleading Fifth Amendment Matthew Engel in Washington Wednesday February 13, 2002 The Guardian Congressional investigators predicted that the unravelling of the Enron affair would now take "several years" after the fish everyone was most anxious to catch slipped away yesterday. Kenneth Lay, the former chairman and chief executive of the fallen energy company, answered his subpoena to appear before the Senate Commerce Committee and, as predicted, answered no questions, asserting his right under the Fifth Amendment not to incriminate himself. In a brief statement to the committee, Mr Lay said he was "deeply troubled" by the dilemma and had reached his decision not to give evidence only after "deep soul-searching". The senators were left almost gasping with frustration. "It's not possible to determine why the Enron ship is at the bottom of the ocean unless we hear from the captain," said Ron Wyden of Oregon. "We are all reduced to a sense of futility," said John Kerry of Massachussetts. With the enactment of this time-honoured and ritualised piece of Washington political theatre, the vast number of investigators working on the case have nowhere to go except towards reform of company law and/or a long slog of evidence-gathering to tie corporate executives - up to and including Mr Lay - to specific crimes. The task is being complicated by absurd duplication. Thirteen separate congressional committees are looking into the case: some of them do not expect to begin hearings before the autumn. These are in addition to all the federal and local agencies which will eventually have to place their findings before a grand jury if prosecutions are to result. "The task is absolutely gargantuan," said a congressional source. Enron had 2,832 offshore subsidiaries, all of which will presumably need to be studied. So far most of the investigative headway has been made by the media. The Wall Street Journal yesterday compounded the senators' frustration by managing to link Mr Lay, for the first time, to at least one of the "executive-run partnerships" which helped hide Enron's debts. The Journal had a document with Mr Lay's signature approving a deal with the LJM2 partnership, run by Enron's former chief financial officer Andrew Fastow. Previously, Mr Lay had said he was not fully informed about the partnerships. All the committee could do was force Mr Lay to listen, for an hour and a quarter, to the senators' individual statements. He sat, as upright and impassively as he could, while the politicians - many of whom had taken his money -lectured, hectored and occasionally insulted him. Peter Fitzgerald of Illinois called him a "most accomplished confidence trickster" and added: "I'd say you were a car nival barker, except it wouldn't be fair to carnival barkers." Barbara Boxer of California, whose state suffered an energy crisis last year in which Enron was deeply implicated, told him: "I know you're not going to talk to the committee. You have the right, but I have the right to talk to you. My state was bled dry by your price-gouging. And what you did to your employees was without conscience." Mr Lay said his refusal to answer questions was solely at the insistence of his lawyers and added: "I come here today with a profound sadness about what has happened to Enron, its current and former employees, retirees and other stakeholders." He is the sixth person involved in this scandal to plead the Fifth Amendment before Congress. And the one significant exception, Jeffrey Skilling, also a former chief executive, was widely excoriated for his insistence that he was ignorant of the company's practices. Nearly all the senators refrained from overt political points, although the crucial House vote on campaign finance reform, expected today, provided a strong undertow to proceedings. The one exception was the chairman, Fritz Hollings. "There's no better example than Kenny Boy of cash-and-carry government," he said. Mr Lay tried not to wince.
