WHO'S HAPPY ABOUT ENRON? SOME GET SCREWED WHILE OTHERS GET LAY'D
etherzone.com
By: Doug Powers
The world shuddered after energy giant Enron filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The announcement essentially meant that thousands of investors had lost a fortune virtually overnight. For many, their life savings, retirement plans, and college funds are now gone. Their money has been used as rolling papers in a bizarre white collar Cheech & Chong movie.
Fear not though, the federal government is looking into all this. Pillars of integrity such as Tom Daschle, Dick Gephardt and Ted Kennedy will let us know how we were all scammed by Kenneth Lay and his ilk, how Enron has almost irreversibly damaged the economy, attempt to implicate Bush and Cheney, and thus begin positioning themselves for a run at the White House in 2004. Of course, they'll be ever so careful to not expose their own part in any of this. Watch out, Dorothy; don't pull back the wrong curtain. Like everything else, the Enron mess, which could be covered in more democratic fingerprints than republican, will somehow also bolster their argument that taxes must be raised. Only a true liberal would screw your wife and then try to make you like him by charging you for it.
Having the nations 7th largest company file Chapter 11 and lay off thousands of employees certainly gives the economy a hit, but does anybody gain in all this? First off, all this is definitely going to help K-Mart, who also recently filed for bankruptcy. All those poor folks who lost their entire 401K's and investment portfolios in Enron are now forced to shop there. I wouldn't be surprised to see a big upswing in K-Mart's next quarterly report. If General Motors or Exxon would go under, they might even be able to dig themselves clear out of debt. Dare to dream, fellas!
Tens of thousands of people losing their life savings must also be welcome news for the Ramen Noodle company. There's only so long you can support an entire company on feeding desperate grad students. And with college kids having more and more disposable income and therefore the ability to afford higher quality foods such as fish sticks, Taco Bell, and fruit roll-ups, this Enron thing is really a Godsend. It must have opened up a whole new market segment for them. Not since "Black Tuesday" has there been a party at Ramen headquarters like the one there was after Enron's announcement of bankruptcy.
The credit card people must be swimming in their own "yee-ha's" right now too. No cash for people means they're going to be turning out more plastic than a Malibu cosmetic surgeon. In a perfect world, they'd kick back a little of that 20 percent to K-Mart and Ramen, or temporarily lower the ludicrous interest rate to help out down-on-their-luck Americans, but they won't, which is why I like them. They ain't Marxists.
Another company that has benefited greatly has been Shredco, the mobile shredding service. According to their website, Shredcoinc.com, "We guarantee destruction" (a claim also made on Mike Tyson's website). Apparently Shredco was hired by Enron and/or their auditing firm Arthur Andersen to drive one of their giant shredders on wheels over there and turn tons of potentially incriminating documents into parade confetti. Investigators are now busy putting together the puzzle from hell while Shredco sits in the Cayman Islands lighting cigars with hundred dollar bills, then shredding the rest. Yet another segment of the economy is helped by Enron.
Whether or not the Enron bankruptcy would have an immediate positive overall effect on the economy is still up in the air. According to my friend and personal economist Milton Greenkeynesfriedmanspan, "Traditionally, having large numbers of people lose a fortune virtually overnight does tend to increase the earnings of those companies who make a living off the less fortunate. Whether or not that economic boost will trickle up to some of the higher ticket retailers, we just don't know yet."
Another business it has "trickled up" to, thanks to Jesse Jackson, is Greyhound. The reverend is leading a 3-bus caravan of laid off Enron workers from Houston to Washington D.C. Leading it from a first class seat on a jet. Time the laid-off Enron workers could have spent looking for another job will now be wasted buying Garfield bobble-heads at Stuckey's and writing that "Here I sit all broken hearted..." poem on the bathroom walls of highway rest stops. If you've ever traveled by bus, you're probably not reading this because you're not there yet. I do pity the Enron workers. First they lose their jobs, and now they have to sit in a bus caravan that's moving at about the speed of the Western Front.
In the meantime, Jackson, who attended President Bush's "State of the Union" address, will now wait for the bus caravan to arrive sometime around mid-summer. Ample time to take in some sights, study the Good Book, and buy some souvenirs for the woman he loves, and his wife.
3 buses will go through a lot of gasoline, which will then help the petroleum industry, thus destroying any hope K-Mart and Ramen Noodles had of Exxon going out of business, forcing them to doctor their books a little more so they can stay in business, which means they'll have to call Shredco. All this will again be protested by Jesse Jackson, who will then find a few dozen people stupid enough to sit on a bus for a trip covering more miles than Voyager II. This will then boost the roadside cafe business and also expend about as much fuel as the invasion of Normandy, making Exxon so happy that they go out and buy a bunch of cars from General Motors, which will further tick off K-Mart and Ramen, who would like to see them both go out of business because they need more clientele. But they won't, so for now that means more cooked books. Enter Shredco once again. The corporate "circle of life" continues, unabated, forever.
So what's next, other than Arthur Andersen being forced to mow lawns for a living? Who knows. On their bankruptcy declaration, Enron listed its debt at $31.2 billion. My personal theory is that they were accidentally sent Ivana Trump's American Express bill. |
