What Enron means to me.

The Enron trial is over. And with it goes a piece of Houston history. (I’ll ignore the appeals for now.) It was a spectacular failure that hurt plenty of people. The architects of the plan will be, or have been punished, and justice will be served.

Houston was proud of Enron during those booming energy trading days. I have plenty friends who made a ton of money from Enron, and some made money on Enron stock. It was an audacious attempt to change the rules of accounting. It was an amazing group of smart people who looked at the rules and found ways around them. Some of these were legal (Mark to market was approved by the SEC, after all) but the deception came back to haunt the players.

We could cay we (My sweet ever-lovin’ and I) benefited from Enron sort of indirectly. We bought our house from an Enron coal trader after she skedaddled to New York City in disgrace. That is a great thing for us as we feel our house is the best place we have ever lived.

A friend introduced me to the Photofete group and tried to get me to do some consulting (Jennifer Binder was as arrogant as Jeff Skilling. No work for me there)

I dealt with the Enron Capital and Trade folks briefly when one of the companies I was with was looking for investors. (We were too mundane)

I have friends who worked at Enron, interviewed at Enron, or hoped that they may get a job at Enron. I worked with a woman who was an executive assistant at Enron (and she said those jokers were just as mean and mean spirited as you thought they might be.

Young professionals in school wanted to work for Enron when they got out because they made so much money. Whenever you ran into someone who worked for Enron, whether they were an accounts payable clerk or an energy trader, they let you know it. They really and truly thought they were smarter than anyone they met – and wanted to prove it.

I live in Houston during the last big boom (1980-1984 or so) and there were plenty of people on the make. But they were all trying to build something (dig wells, apartments, strip centers). They all knew it was not a zero sum game, and they could win by coming up with a better idea to deliver something. These Enron jokers were there to game the system.

If Lay and Skilling every get out of jail, it will be too soon.