Exploding Enron Mountain of Myths
On Monday, I took my place at the head of the 22 million-strong lecture hall at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies, and destroyed the myths of Enron. This is not a "scandal." Not only isn't there even an allegation of scandal, much less proof, there isn't even a way you could think there might be a scandal! Enron failed, with neither the commerce nor treasury secretaries in this administration doing anything to help them - as evidenced by the fact that the company failed.
This mountain of myths is now getting higher than Enron's stock at its highest level. We don't know precisely what went wrong, and I'm all for finding that out through investigations. Yet the media template is already being created. I am a layperson when it comes to this economic stuff. So, to educate myself, I found a simple little Yahoo! web page that answered a lot of questions and dispelled a whole lot of these myths. Here they are:
Enron Myth #1: Insiders sold their positions in secret. EIB Truth: This Yahoo! site lists every insider transaction for the last year.
Enron Myth #2: Enron workers were not permitted to sell their shares. EIB Truth: The so-called lockout did not happen until late October. Before that, anybody could have sold shares - and did.
Enron Myth #3: "Little guys" locked in while the insiders dumped their stock. EIB Truth: Since this so-called lockdown, Ken Lay sold zero shares. Jeffrey Skilling sold zero shares. In fact, almost all insider sales were from one beneficial holder, a guy named Roger Maynard - and he could get more than what he did if he'd held on to the stock and sold it today.
Enron Myth #4: Ken Lay screwed everybody. EIB Truth: Whatever he did or didn't do, legal or criminal, I have no idea. But he received the proverbial screwing more than anybody did here. I'm not defending Ken Lay, but he took out over $100 million in the last three years. That's a lot of money, but at the stock's high, he had $3 billion worth.
Enron Myth #5: The little guys lost fortunes in their retirement funds. EIB Truth: The reports of 401(k), IRA losses, are painful, but these reports of people losing everything appear to be massively inflated, if you look at this from the standpoint of Enron's all-time high in the 80s. In other words, it could have been much worse than it was. It's a matter of personal choice.
Myth #6: Ken Lay wrongly sent out encouraging e-mails to Enron employees. EIB Truth: The e-mail was sent, but is it unusual for the head of the company to send out a rally-around-the-flag, positive-spin memo? Is he supposed to send out a memo that tells everyone to abandon ship?
(This is the Biggie) Myth #7: Henry "Nostrilitis" Waxman and Joe Lieberman assert that the Bush administration "should have warned the little guy" that there were problems at Enron so they could have sold their stock. EIB Truth: This betrays sheer ignorance when it comes to the reality. Can you imagine this? "Hi. This is Dubbya, your president. Sell your Enron stock now." Can you imagine the national panic that would have ensued?
There are so many myths floating around out there that simply are not true to the degree you may think, because everybody has ballyhooed this stuff (like always happens anyway), and exaggerated it and built it up. Someone has to be the truth detector on this, and as so often seems to happen, that job has landed on my shoulders. I don't know anybody at Enron other than Ken Lay, and I haven't spoken to him in years.
Again, this information is not spin or opinion or feelings. This information all comes off this Yahoo! site, and is in the public domain. I have no interest or ulterior motive here, no goal other than getting the truth out there for the American people to see. I'm all for investigating Enron and finding out what went wrong, but there's clearly an attempt by the Democrats to turn this financial scandal into a political one - and that's simply not going to happen.
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