Enron may not have been so hot at devising innovative mechanisms for allocating and trading energy and other commodities. But, as this article explains, they were fonts of innovation when it came to gaming Washington.
This included a specially-designed computer program which precisely calculated the costs various regulations would create for Enron. The numbers generated out of this influence-peddlotron were then used to determine when the big-money lobbying machine should be kicked into gear. It all amounted to what the management consultant types might call total quality corruption.
Then there was Ken Lay’s idea of “gathering up pundits, journalists and politicians and placing them on lucrative retainers.” At least one anonymous Enron exec says the pundits ended up being PFBNBs (see post below). But you wonder.
Then there are some choice gems like this…
“The ingrained philosophy was, me first, money counts and the government should eliminate my taxes,” said another former manager. “That’s all they cared about — what impacted them personally.”
The theme of the article is that the Enronians ended up being too clever by half. Their titanic arrogance did them in.
