Only government could turn Enron around

America detests the notion but sometimes unfettered capitalism just isn't efficient

The Straight Goods Cyber Forum
with Larry Solway

Commentary:

  I decided to raise a little hell of my own over the Enron affair. They call it a "scandal." Some scandal. It is buccaneer free enterprise at its most vile.
  "America has gone from creative free enterprise to Casino Capitalism."
  That's from the last person I'd ever want to quote: Pat Buchanan. It came from the McLaughlin Report on PBS where a group of noted pundits argue issues of the day. The program is full of fuss and feathers and McLaughlin forces journalists to be seers. According to my favourite media critic Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post, they are almost never right. Kurtz says journalists make predictions about everything and no one ever keeps score.
  They blathered on about Enron. Knowing American mind-set, even on public broadcasting, you can be sure that no one strays from the dogma that free enterprise and democracy are inextricably bounded together in a kind of inseparable bond of Political Truth. Americans traditionally suggest that any left-wing government is just a whisker away from Communism and all it implies.
  I have a left-wing answer to what should be done with Enron. It is, I believe, a viable energy distribution company. Their utter failure to show any sense of intellectual, personal, or economic probity is beside the point. That their chairman "Danny Boy" was tight with George W. is a fact. That their last president, a duplicitous man named Skillen sat before Congress and denied any complicity in the shenanigans that led to bankruptcy is also beyond dispute.
  We know that senior officers cashed out early for millions; that Enron siphoned off resources to other companies; and that hundreds of employees' retirement nest eggs are empty.
  What would an interventionist government do? They would, or should, appoint a Trustee to run Enron as a going concern. Funds to keep it afloat would come from the confiscation of illegal insider trading profits and from the accumulated assets of the wrongdoers. In America they have a law which allows them to arbitrarily confiscate money deemed to be the proceeds of crime, even before the alleged wrongdoer has been convicted of any crime.
  America detests the notion that government can actually run business. They are fed private-is-better with their mother's milk. But a government appointed trustee with a selected group of new directors, funded by illicit profits, could put Enron back into business, save the jobs of the employees, detour many of the liabilities that will fall to other companies or banks, and get them back into the energy distribution business.
  The notion so reeks of Left-wing-pinko stuff that America would gag on it. But the last time they had a serious economic crisis tinged with illegalities - the savings and loan scandal - they stepped in.
  Can they do it with Enron? I think they should. Unfortunately Pat Buchanan would turn pale at the thought. So too would Dick Cheney and George W. - two big-time energy guys devoted to the idea that capitalists know best what to do with capital.
  Cheney with his presidency of Halibuton Oil is comfy and cozy with all these people. They may even have a secret handshake that allows them to exchange schemes for bilking the public and making the government pay. Bush of course, through his oil shark father, teethed on energy and energy schemes and exploration and the defiling of the landcaspe for the sake of fossil fuel.
  While I'm at it, we might remember that during the Savings and Loan scandal (see above) one of the Bush boys was involved in a failed S&L. I forget. Was it Dubya himself or his Florida governor brother Jed? Pick a pack of pilferers.
  September 11th proved to all Americans that when the chips are down it is the duty of government to step in. They can save Enron then sell it back to new investors. It is, in Wall Street parlance - a win-win situation. I would even buy stock.

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