Enron Scandal Quotes

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.

Failures happen in any system.

The worst story I ever wrote was after the conviction of Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay. My co-author and I wrote a piece for 'Fortune' saying everything's going to be different now.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Well, there's a bright side to this for Ken Lay. You know, throughout the years Ken Lay has been a big campaign contributor to the Republican Party. So now, he'll be able to meet with those same people when he goes to prison.

Republicans do not have good ideas. Borrowing two trillion dollars from your grandchildren to finance a Social Security scheme that looks like Enron is not a good idea.

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?

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.

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.

You know what Ken Lay had for breakfast this morning? Shredded Wheat.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.