Kenneth Lay

“So, May, 2006, a jury finally convicts Skilling of 19 out of 28 counts of wire fraud and securities fraud, and Lay gets convicted on six counts of securities fraud.”

“But the way he repaid them was he took cash loans from Enron. So Enron loaned him cash. What a merry-go-round. And Ken backed his collateral for that cash that he ended up then repaying the loans to Enron with, Was the Enron stock that he originally had taken …”

“All told, I think Lay sells about three hundred million dollars worth of Enron stock via these transactions. Skilling sells about two hundred million, and Fastow and a bunch of the other executives sell a whole bunch too.”

“So he comes back to Lay and the board and says, our actual obligations are thirty four billion dollars, which the debt on the balance sheet was 12.8 billion dollars.”

“So before Transco and Lay, the whole idea of like any form of trading or financialization of energy, of oil and gas, didn't really exist because it was all regulated by the government before then.”

“This time, Lei does fire them, and fortunately for Young and Ron and for Lei, but unfortunately for the rest of the world, this happens early enough in the quarter that the trading floor is able to dig out enough of these losses that they don't have to report …”

“So Lay ends up serving as the Deputy Undersecretary of Energy in the Department of the Interior, right as these oil shocks are happening and deregulation is starting to be talked about.”