ENRON Bosses on a Moral Par With Bin Laden

As demented, twisted, and murderous as Bin Laden may be he is acting out of deep religious beliefs. The bosses at Enron completely swindled not only their share holders but their own employees simply to make money. Their only motivation was greed.

They encouraged their employees to invest in the company even though they knew that Enron was going down the tubes. They did this, even though they knew it was jeopardizing the retirement and overall financial well-being of employees, just so they could bilk a few more million out of the pyramid scheme of a company they constructed. If that isn’t evil somebody needs to explain to me what is.

Enron’s leaders, trained in our finest schools, not only showed a lack of business ethics—an oxymoron, I know--but they also seemed completely free of any sense of human decency. For a company to display such utter disregard for its employees is disgusting. It is tantamount to infanticide.

Please keep in mind that the people at the top of Enron were already wealthy by anyone’s definition yet they continued their piracy simply to propel themselves higher into the economic stratosphere.

Enron is simply the most egregious example of a type of corporate thinking that came to a boiling point in the dot com boom and subsequent bust. Hundreds of companies went public with no plan other than to make millions or billions for the clever few at the helm. They knew when they floated stock that they didn’t need start-up capital but they saw a huge loophole in our criminal justice system and took a very profitable advantage of it; a criminal justice system that deals harshly with petty drug dealers and thieves but allows the big fish to swim and devour with impunity.

As far as comparing these corporate pirates to a terrorist I can only say that I reserve the right to speak hyperbolically since the largest bankruptcy in world history seems to be hiding behind this country’s hysterical fear of terrorism. Without 9/11 Enron would be under much closer scrutiny from the press and the American people who have been robbed of billions and billions of their hard-earned dollars. It wouldn’t even occur to most Americans to earn their living by the sleazy swindles that seem to have been business-as-usual at Enron.

I don't believe that jail is an appropriate punishment for anyone other than violent offenders therefore I suggest that the criminals involved in these financial scandals be required to work at a minimum wage job for the term of their sentencing. They must live only on what they make at this job, and funds from any other source will constitute a breach of their sentencing. These people seem to have nothing but contempt for their employees and the American consumer, let's see if a little honest work can make them see differently.