Quotes & Sayings About Enron

When Enron collapsed, through court processes, thousands and thousands of emails came out that were internal, and it provided a window into how the whole company was managed. It was all the little decisions that supported the flagrant violations. — Julian Assange

Every coach, every executive, every leader: They all know right from wrong. Even those Enron guys. When someone uncovers a scandal in their company, I don't think they can say, "I didn't know that was going on." They're just saying they're too dumb to do their job! And if they really are too dumb, then why are they getting paid millions of dollars to do it? They know what's going on. — Bo Schembechler

Capitalism, so called, is when free people accumulate capital of their own free will for use on freely determined projects. The fact of the matter is that most of these projects flop. Donald Trump, for example. Every property he touches seems to go to hell. "Fat Cat" would be the wrong epithet for Trump. If someone other than paroled former Enron accountants were keeping his books, he'd probably be shown to have a net worth less than that of your twenty-pound tabby who just shredded the drapes. What — P. J. O'Rourke

Pete Wilson deregulated energy as a pay out to Enron, and we blamed Gray Davis. — Adam McKay

What Enron was doing, what caused investors to embrace it in a rapture of baffled awe, was hiding debt. — P. J. O'Rourke

Enron's president, Ken Lay, passed away last week. So, I guess even God lost money on that Enron deal. I believe the official cause of death was listed as "karma." The family asked in lieu of flowers, please send some elderly retiree's entire life savings. — Jay Leno

I happen to represent Enron here in Houston. We have many good corporate citizens here in Houston. Enron happened to have been one. — Sheila Jackson Lee

I think everybody is covering their [posteriors] with the Enron scandal and it was very convenient that Sept. 11 came along to deflect the fact that they should never have been in the White House in the first place. What happened in the election was completely corrupt. — Sandra Bernhard

A year earlier, no company had been accorded more faith than Enron; by late November, none was trusted less. And so, a gasping gurgle, a desperate SOS: Enron, the emblem of free markets, the champion of deregulation, reached into its depleted treasury and forked over $100,000 to each of the major political parties' campaign war chests. Then, it shuttered its online trading unit - its erstwhile gem. On November 28, Standard & Poor's downgraded Enron to junk-bond level - which triggered provisions in Enron's debt requiring it to immediately repay billions of its obligations. This it could not do. Its stock was seventy cents and falling, and, now, no gatekeepers and no credit remained. Accordingly, in the first week of December, Enron, the archetype of shareholder value, availed itself of the time-honored protection for those who have lost their credit: bankruptcy. — Roger Lowenstein

Leopold, one of the reporters who broke the Enron story, is now breaking his own story: how he got addicted to cocaine, committed grand theft, cleaned himself up and found happiness as a 'news junkie.' This scrappy memoir ... might become required reading for aspiring journalists. — Publishers Weekly

Being a politician means never having to say you're sorry. You don't have to say, 'I never should have voted to subsidize that ridiculous Enron project in India.' ... After all, they're greedy businessmen and you're a selfless public servant. — Harry Browne

Many Enron employees lost 70 percent to 90 percent of their retirement assets after the company indicated that it would re-state profit reports, — Elaine Chao

Buying only what you know can end in disaster. Just think about Enron's employees and business partners, the 'locals' who bought lots of its stock because they thought they were in the know. — Kenneth Fisher

The big rumor going around is, we may begin bombing Iraq. Or, as the White House calls it, Operation Keep Enron Off The Front Page. — Jay Leno

Creative accounting is an absolute curse to a civilization. One could argue that double-entry bookkeeping was one of history's great advances. Using accounting for fraud and folly is a disgrace. In a democracy, it often takes a scandal to trigger reform. Enron was the most obvious example of a business culture gone wrong in a long, long time. — Charlie Munger

Things that have happened with Enron and companies like that, where they've squandered their employees' pension funds, I think it has brought a new level of anxiety. People don't feel like they can trust their employer. — Mike Huckabee

A corporation like Enron is a person with a legal identity and no ethical accountability. — Doug Berry

By incentivizing Wall Street players to sniff out inefficient or corrupt companies and bet against them, short-selling acts as a sort of policing system; legal short-sellers have been instrumental in helping expose firms like Enron and WorldCom. — Matt Taibbi

George Clooney married Amal Alamuddin this year. Amal is a human rights lawyer who worked on the Enron case, was an advisor to Kofi Annan regarding Syria, and was selected for a three-person commission investigating rules of war violation in the Gaza Strip. So tonight, her husband is getting a Lifetime Achievement Award. — Tina Fey

We all have a stake in the truth. Society functions based on an assumption that people will abide by their word - that truth prevails over mendacity. For the most part, it does. If it didn't, relationships would have a short shelf life, commerce would cease, and trust between parents and children would be destroyed. All of us depend on honesty, because when truth is lacking we suffer, and society suffers. When Adolf Hitler lied to Neville Chamberlain, there was not peace in our time, and over fifty million people paid the price with their lives. When Richard Nixon lied to the nation, it destroyed the respect many had for the office of the president. When Enron executives lied to their employees, thousands of lives were ruined overnight. We count on our government and commercial institutions to be honest and truthful. We need and expect our friends and family to be truthful. Truth is essential for all relations be they personal, professional, or civic. — Joe Navarro

The collapse of Enron and the subsequent collapse of Arthur Andersen were tremendous tragedies. But as I stated at the time of my indictment on July 8, 2004, failure does not equate to a crime. — Kenneth Lay

I've never commented much about my experience at Enron except to say, when I was there, it was a much more pipeline and asset-oriented company. — Richard Kinder

The trial of Enron chiefs Jeffrey Skilling and Ken Lay began four-and-a-half years after perpetrating
allegedly
the fraud that led to the second largest bankruptcy in American history. Why four-and-a-half years? Because apparently it's harder to bring Ken Lay to trial than it is to invade two countries. — Jon Stewart

For business to survive over a long period, it needs to be contributing to society and people's well-being. Otherwise, who's going to want it? Otherwise you end up like Enron or some of these other companies. — Charles Koch

The CEO of Enron, Jeffrey Skilling, married one of the Enron secretaries this week. It's amazing how romantic these Enron guys can be when they realize that wives can't be forced to testify against their husbands. Skilling said today she was the best secretary Enron had ever had. She could shred 950 words a minute ... I guess they are on their honeymoon right now. That's going pretty well. Hey, he's used to screwing Enron employees. — Jay Leno

The Union is what needs defending this year. Government of Enron and by Halliburton and for the Southern Baptists is not the same as what Lincoln spoke of. This gang of Republicans has humbugged us to death on terrorism and tax cuts for the comfy and school prayer and flag burning and claimed the right to know what books we read and to dump their sewage upstream from the rest of us and clear-cut the forests and gut the IRS and promote the corporate takeover of the public airwaves and to hell with anybody who opposes them. — Garrison Keillor

At the height of the Enron mania, the company's market value was $65 billion. Once the dust cleared, the final value was $0. — Robert Kiyosaki

I wish I could undo what I did at Enron but I can't. I understand that I deserve punishment. Your honor, I accept the prison sentence that you are about to impose and will serve it without bitterness. — Andrew Fastow

I remember when I did my Enron film, my executive producers at the time felt very strongly that I should mock the Enron executives more viciously because everybody wanted that moment. — Alex Gibney

'Power Play' is a morality tale for our post-Enron world and - not incidentally - wildly entertaining. Nothing wrong with that. — M.J. Rose

Are you getting a big kick out of the Enron scandal? I find this interesting that whenever a big crisis starts, people start showing up in church. So, Ken Lay shows up in church this weekend. Church officials are still looking for the collection plates. — David Letterman

Kaminski plunged ahead. "I am not going to sign off on anything related to the Raptors," he said. "And I don't care if I'm fired for it."
Buy raised a hand. "Whoa, wait a minute, I don't think you'll be fired," he replied quickly. "Now that Skilling's gone, we have a different mantra in Enron."
He looked Kaminski in the eye. "We're expected to be honest", he said.
p.525 — Kurt Eichenwald

Because the sad fact is that the Enron Corporation and others manipulated with unfortunately great effect the energy market in the West Coast starting in 2000. — Jay Inslee

I think that the failures of Enron and WorldCom and other companies are partially failures of investors to recognize companies that are selling for a thousand times nothing, but chances are they may be worth only that. — Arthur Levitt

You don't want another Enron? Here's your law: If a company, can't explain, in one sentence, what it does ... it's illegal. — Lewis Black

The subculture of felons is in great vogue among adolescents. Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, and so forth allow us Republicans to say to America's young people, 'We be thugs.' The GOP may capture the youth vote at last. — P. J. O'Rourke

So Merrill Lynch has launched its first campaign in years to advertise the accomplishments of its investment banking business. The ads feature things like Merrill's recapitalization of Sierra Pacific. I guess including "helping Enron achieve its earnings goals in 1999" might be a little awkward given that Merrill Lynch bankers are currently on trial in Houston for that "accomplishment." — Bethany McLean

Enron followed the unwise practice of paying bonuses based on forecasted profits, not actual cash flows, a system that posed a problem remarkably similar to the R&D issues Gluck and his colleagues had solved at Northern Electric years earlier. In short: You can forecast anything. Delivering actual results is a different story. The emphasis on forecasts also neutralized Enron's so-called risk-management group, which became a shrinking violet in the face of ever more outrageous estimates. — Duff McDonald

Currently, we're finding that about 75 percent of potential jurors have anger or deep-seated hatred toward anyone associated with Enron. — Michael Ramsey

But the most important thing is, Enron did not cause the California crisis. — Kenneth Lay

The only beef Enron employees have with top management is that management did not inform employees of the collapse in time to allow them to get in on the swindle. If Enron executives had shouted, "Head for the hills!" the employees might have had time to sucker other Americans into buying wildly over-inflated Enron stock. Just because your boss is a criminal doesn't make you a hero. — Ann Coulter

Enron would keep its unearned windfall, generated solely because David Duncan didn't know what he was doing. — Kurt Eichenwald

Yes! We finally captured Martha Stewart. You know, with all the massive and almost completely unpunished fraud perpetrated on the public by companies like Enron, Global Crossing, and Tyco we finally got the ring leader. Maybe now we can lower the nation's terror alert to periwinkle. — Jon Stewart

Enron was becoming a virtual cult of creativity, often placing swagger over substance. New ideas were celebrated for their newness, for their potential; tried and true businesses like the pipelines were almost derided. — Kurt Eichenwald

The longer someone ignores an email before finally responding, the more relative social power that person has. Map these response times across an entire organization and you get a remarkably accurate chart of the actual social standing. The boss leaves emails unanswered for hours or days; those lower down respond within minutes. There's an algorithm for this, a data mining method called "automated social hierarchy detection," developed at Columbia University.8 When applied to the archive of email traffic at Enron Corporation before it folded, the method correctly identified the roles of top-level managers and their subordinates just by how long it took them to answer a given person's emails. Intelligence agencies have been applying the same metric to suspected terrorist gangs, piecing together the chain of influence to spot the central figures. — Daniel Goleman

Seed catalogs are responsible for more unfulfilled fantasies than Enron and Playboy combined. — Michael Perry

Are you familiar with 9/11? Building 7? You know what was in there? All the Enron stuff. I guess that building went down on its own. — Jesse Ventura

Most unfortunately, Enron's plunge into bankruptcy court also cost many of its rank-and-file employees their savings. — Alex Berenson

Bush began helping Enron in the eighties. — Paul Begala

We will not rest until the wooden stake is punched through the heart of the Enron lawsuit against us. — Maria Cantwell

I take responsibility for what happened at Enron, both good and bad. But I cannot take responsibility for criminal conduct that I was unaware of. — Kenneth Lay

If you look at the great frauds of all time, Enron had that phantom trading floor. What Herbalife has is it has phantom or fictitious customers. — Bill Ackman

Well, the manhunt continues for that elusive evil mastermind, but I'm telling you Enron CEO Kenneth Lay remains at large. — David Letterman

Isn't there a flaw in the logic of that phrase - speak truth to power? It assumes that power doesn't know the truth. But power knows the truth just as well, if not better, than the powerless know the truth. Enron knows what it's doing. We don't have to tell it what it's doing. We have to tell other people what Enron is doing. Similarly, the people who are building the dams know what they're doing. The contractors know how much they're stealing. The bureaucrats know how much they're getting in bribes.
Power knows the truth. There isn't any doubt about that. It is really about telling the story. Good fiction is the truest thing that ever there was. Facts are not necessarily the only truths. Facts can be fiddled with by economists and bankers. There are other kinds of truth. It's about telling the story. As a writer, that's the best thing I can do. It's not just about digging up facts. — Arundhati Roy

Wouldn't it be great if all of Osama bin Laden's money was tied-up in Enron stock? — Dennis Miller

In the case of Enron, we balance our positions all the time. — Kenneth Lay

Most of the evil of the world comes about not out of evil motives, but somebody saying 'get with the program, be a team player;' this is what we saw at Enron, this is what we saw in the Nixon administration with their scandal. — Philip Zimbardo

Some members of Congress now are complaining they are underpaid. They want to propose a pay raise. You can't blame them. A lot of them took a big income hit when Enron folded. — Jay Leno

People are treating the Stewart case as seriously as Enron when it's really over trivia. — Allan Sloan

But indeed a market like California is not good for Enron. — Kenneth Lay

During the Enron debacle, it was workers who took the pounding, not bankers. Not only did Enron employees lose their jobs, many lost their retirement savings. That's because they were at the bottom of the investing food chain. — Robert Kiyosaki

Early 2000s, we get Enron, which tells us the books are dirty. And what is our repeated response? We just keep pulling the threads out of the regulatory fabric. — Elizabeth Warren

The environment changed with Martha Stewart and Enron. — Steve Martin

The Houston Astros want to change the name of Enron Field where they play. I guess the Enron name could cause problems for them. Like players could steal a base and then deny it. — Jay Leno

You know Texas is - even more now that Enron has bit the dust - it's held up on the back of small businesses. — Rachel Griffiths

The not-quite-sort-of lie works here too - often an ad will announce that "Congressman Johnson voted for a bill that gave tax breaks to companies like Enron." True - although the bill allowed all companies to accelerate depreciation of copying machines. Yes, Enron benefited, but Enron also benefited from the revolution of the Earth around the sun. Hardly an argument to freeze the planet in one spot. — James Lileks

I take full responsibility for what happened at Enron. But saying that, I know in my mind that I did nothing criminal. — Kenneth Lay

Enron and 9/11 marked the end of an era of individual freedom and the beginning of personal responsibility. — Jeffrey R. Immelt

Enron had already collapsed and filed for bankruptcy protection by the beginning of 2002. But despite complaints from short sellers that corporations had used accounting gimmickry to inflate their profits, many investors thought the crisis at Enron was an isolated case. — Alex Berenson

In my world, people are always plotting. You
have no idea of all the crimes people in business commit every
day. Like it was nothing. Or there's a set of special rules for them.
Remember when Bush made that whole speech about 'corporate
ethics' last year? What a fraud. You think stuff like Enron or
WorldCom is an aberration? It's only the tip. Business is a religion.
Probably the only one practiced all over the world. — Andrew Vachss

It turns out Enron workers were not only shredding documents at work, they were having sex at work. Having sex and shredding documents. Those are two things you don't want to get mixed up. — Jay Leno

The Enron scandal calls into question the integrity of the entire capitalist system, which previously we assumed was based on honest, straightforward greed. — Joel Achenbach

Enron Field in Houston, the Trans World Dome in St. Louis and PSINet Stadium in Baltimore are just three of the modern-day coliseums named for companies that have found new homes in bankruptcy court. — Alex Berenson

Former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling appeared before Congress. Do you think they even bothered swearing him in? Now he is denying he lied to Congress last week. He's saying it was just the liquor talking. — Jay Leno

Companies like Enron have learned that small investments in endowing chairs, sponsoring research programs or hiring moonlighting professors can return big payoffs in generating books, reports, articles, testimony and other materials to push for and rationalize public policy positions that damage the public interest but benefit corporate bottomlines. — Ralph Nader

Ken Lay, the disgraced former chairman of Enron, found a way to escape his legal problems: He died after being convicted of fraud and conspiracy charges. — Robert Kiyosaki

Enron is now officially out of the energy business. They are now in a new business: confetti. — Jay Leno

Playboy magazine is now doing a 'Women of Enron' pictorial spread ... Apparently the only thing these women have left to shred is their dignity. — Jay Leno

Over the weekend, former Enron executives Jeffrey Skilling and Rebecca Carter married each other during a huge ceremony in Houston. The happy couple is planning to honeymoon for three weeks in front of Congress. — Conan O'Brien

Last week convicted Enron crook Ken Lay died of a heart attack. They announced they were going to cremate him. Where he's going, why bother?. — Jay Leno

Before Enron, I think people were a bit more naive about the way things worked, and I think Enron pulled the curtain back on unsavoury practices that turned out to be a lot more widespread. — Bethany McLean

These guys [the Catholic church] make Enron look like altar boys. — Dan Rather

Ken Lay has, does and will continue to accept responsibility for the fall of Enron. He was the man at the controls. But failure is not a crime. — Michael Ramsey

The White House again refused to turn over discussions Vice President Cheney had with Enron officials over energy policy. Cheney said if he had to disclose every time some business donated a ton of money then came in to write its own policy to govern itself, he wouldn't get any work done. — Dennis Miller

A jury found former Enron sleezeballs Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling guilty of fraud and conspiracy. Ken Lay? That's not a good name to have when you're going to prison. And Kenny Boy ain't too good either ... I guess in prison they'll have done to them what they did to the stockholders. — Jay Leno

If it were not for government regulation of big corporations, executives at companies like Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, they could have cheated investors out of millions. — P. J. O'Rourke

The collapse of Enron was devastating to tens of thousands of people and shook the public's confidence in corporate America. — Robert Mueller

In the Enron scandal, whistleblower Sherron Watkins is now calling herself Enron Brokovitch. She testified Ken Lay was duped by the other executives. Oh, yeah. When is the last time you got duped and made $100 million? — Jay Leno

Unlike top management at Enron, exemplary leaders reward dissent. They encourage it. They understand that, whatever momentary discomfort they experience as a result of being told they might be wrong, it is more than offset by the fact that the information will help them make better decisions. — Warren G. Bennis

More money than the crooks at Enron and less taste than a drunk after a bottle of tequila — Maria Lima

The tale of Enron is a story of human weakness, of hubris and greed and rampant self-delusion; of ambition run amok; of a grand experiment in the deregulated world; of a business model that didn't work; and of smart people who believed their next gamble would cover their last disaster - and who couldn't admit they were wrong. — Bethany McLean

IT - especially with its role so greatly enlarged by the arrival of the Internet - has changed not only how we work and conduct business, but also how we (and our customers) play, how we consume, and how we educate our next generations. And yet the IT phenomenon, so evident in the expenditures of every organization, has not yet achieved management attention equal to other areas, such as finance, marketing, operations, and human resources. In far too many companies, IT remains a black box that business managers rarely try to see inside. When business managers do engage in IT discussions, often they bring little expertise to bear. Few feel apologetic about their IT inadequacies. But the time is coming when "I'm not an IT person" will be no more adequate as a manager's defense in the aftermath of a major corporate problem than Jeff Skilling's now notorious "I'm not an accountant" - that CEOs effort to explain his failure to foresee or prevent Enron's spectacular implosion. — Robert D. Austin

If Enron and Walmart got drunk in Vegas and had an evil corporate love child, Fiendish would be their rebellious teenage son." ~Kate — Cathy Yardley

The Enron scandal continues. The U.S. Senate has announced they are going to subpoena Ken Lay and make him testify. Apparently Lay received the subpoena this morning and then, out of habit, immediately shredded it. — Conan O'Brien

Former Enron founder Ken Lay and CEO Jeffrey Skilling found guilty in the Enron case. Ken Lay is so guilty I'm surprised people aren't calling him Congressman Ken Lay. Wait 'till these guys find out in prison that insider trading has a whole new meaning. — Jay Leno

Before the New York Times starts running "Portraits in Grief" of former Enron employees, it's worth remembering that even after the collapse, Enron stock is still worth more than the entire Social Security "trust fund." — Ann Coulter

Enron CEO Kenneth Lay has apparently just slipped across the border into Pakistan. — David Letterman

I'm a good learner. I can dig in. I knew nothing about mark-to-market accounting when I started the 'Enron' film. — Alex Gibney

I predict that in the years ahead Enron, not Sept. 11, will come to be seen as the greater turning point in U.S. society. — Paul Krugman