I woke up this morning to the news that Ken Lay had died of a heart attack.
The reporter was particularly supportive of Mr. Lay. He almost seemed sad that Lay had died, as if to say, "he was such a nice man, its a shame he died." After all, Lay had been keeping a "low profile" at his Aspen, CO estate while awaiting his sentence.
Personally, I found this story a bit offensive but it illustrates the mixed messages we seem to feel about crime and money.
A poor person steals enough to support himself and maybe his family. We cant build prisons fast enough to hold all those black marijuana peddlers and some guy in California got life in prison for stealing a video because of California's "three strikes" law. Politicians fall all over themselves to be "tough on crime".
Rich people steal so much they can afford to generous with charity and "pillars of the community". No one talks about life in prison for Lay or Skilling or Martha Stewart. No one talks about three strikes laws for white collar crime or tries to jail campaign contributors. No sir, big-time fraudsters and embezzlers are important pillars of the community even though the damage caused by their actions actually hurts a lot more people than that video thief.
I for one am not sorry to see Mr Lay go but I am sorry to see him go this way. By dying, his guilty verdict is erased and his wife receives a $10M life insurance policy that cannot be encumbered. Sometimes crime does pay.
Lay: Corporate Chieftain To Corporate Criminal
July 5, 2006 4:39 p.m.
Former Enron CEO Kenneth Lay drew admiration during his company's strong growth in the late 1990s, but after the discovery of the accounting scandal, for which he was later convicted, the tenor of the public comments on him changed. Review what was said.
* * *
"Dear Ken: One of the sad things about old friends is that they seem to be getting older -- just like you! 55 years old. Wow! That is really old."
-- Then-Texas Governor George W. Bush, in an April 14, 1997, letter to Mr. Lay, as quoted by Reuters.* * *
"Enron CEO Kenneth L. Lay doesn't like to put on airs. He won't take the express elevator to his 50th floor office in Houston. Instead, he usually rubs shoulders with the rank and file. But the unassuming Lay, raised on a farm in Missouri, is a towering giant in the energy world. Over the past 15 years, he has transformed Enron, a once-struggling pipeline company, into a cutting-edge energy powerhouse."
-- BusinessWeek, Jan. 10, 2000, naming Mr. Lay as one of the top 25 managers of the year* * *
"In the staid world of regulated utilities and energy companies, Enron Corp. is that gate-crashing Elvis. Once a medium-sized player in the stupefyingly soporific gas-pipeline business, Enron in the past decade has become far and away the most vigorous agent of change in its industry, fundamentally altering how billions of dollars' worth of power -- both gas and electric -- is bought, moved, and sold, everywhere in the nation.
"... One large reason Enron acts unlike any other utility is that the two guys running it, Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, act unlike any other utility executives. Ken Lay, the CEO, actually was a pipeline utility exec once, but with a difference. Lay, 58, has a doctorate in economics, and spent years in the 1970s working at what's now the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, surrounded by lawyers and petroleum engineers. … Lay, an august and serious fellow, looks like Patrick Stewart, the actor who portrayed Captain Picard in Star Trek (only with more hair and without the British accent)."
-- Fortune magazine, April 17, 2000 (Read more)* * *
"Well, first of all, Ken Lay is a supporter. And I got to know Ken Lay when he was the head of the -- what they call the Governor's Business Council in Texas. He was a supporter of Ann Richards in my run in 1994. And she had named him the head of the Governor's Business Council. And I decided to leave him in place, just for the sake of continuity. And that's when I first got to know Ken, and worked with Ken, and he supported my candidacy.
"This is -- what anybody's going to find, if -- is that this administration will fully investigate issues such as the Enron bankruptcy, to make sure we can learn from the past, and make sure that workers are protected."
-- President Bush, Jan. 10, 2002 (Read more)3* * *
"Perhaps former Enron Chairman Ken Lay remained ignorant to the last about his company's various frauds and predations. Perhaps he knew nothing about Enron's bogus finances, its phony transactions and the market manipulations that endangered the power supply and public safety in brownout-prone California. That is Lay's stated defense.
"If true, however, Lay was highly overpaid as a corporate chieftain and had precious little expertise on energy markets to share with the Bush administration he frequently advised."
-- Houston Chronicle editorial page, July 9, 2004
