Richard Kinder Quotes

Was I believer in Enron Corporation? Yes, sir, I was.

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.

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.

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.

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

What transpired at Semgroup was no less than a $500 billion fraud on the people of the world.

But if you look at WorldCom, which is the biggest failure to date, they grew dramatically, they were buying companies that were bigger than they were and they were doing it off inflated stock.

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

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

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.

What Enron was doing, what caused investors to embrace it in a rapture of baffled awe, was hiding debt.

The list of companies that have added their own financial metrics is not a savory group.

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.

I agree that there are some bad apples on Wall Street. I spent about ten years exposing corporate and financial fraud for 'Barron's' magazine and I found a lot to write about.

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

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.

Behind a mask of apparent openness and accountability to which once-trusted accountancy firms and business analysts were willing collaborators, a raft of corrupt practices has undermined the livelihoods and expectations of millions.

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.

In the business world, we can point to instances when a lack of integrity has bankrupted entire companies - in sectors as different as finance, telecommunications, manufacturing, and energy.

I grew up around the business quite a bit; I saw a little bit of the underbelly of it.

The constant drip drop of fraudulent activities coming out of Wells Fargo is absolutely outrageous.

I've always felt there was something wrong with Wells Fargo's culture, for a very, very long time.

We need to close the loopholes that allowed large corporations to abuse the Paycheck Protection Program.

To many in the global community, American business - especially our financial institutions - are seen as a bunch of thieves, and as the saying goes, 'There's no honor among thieves.'

The Enron scandal is worthy of the highest level of scrutiny, both because of the enormity of the crimes that may have been committed and because of what the largest bankruptcy in American history has already begun to reveal about the weaknesses in our nation's corporate structures and regulatory oversight.