The Poster Child for Privatized Social Security


Is this what the future holds for Kenny Boy?

Frank Rich reminds us of Enron:

JUST when Americans are being told it's safe to hand over their savings to Wall Street again, he's baaaack! Looking not unlike Chucky, the demented doll of perennial B-horror-movie renown, Ken Lay has crawled out of Houston's shadows for a media curtain call.

His trial is still months away, but there he was last Sunday on "60 Minutes," saying he knew nothin' 'bout nothin' that went down at Enron. This week he is heading toward the best-seller list, as an involuntary star of "Conspiracy of Fools," the New York Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald's epic account of the multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme anointed America's "most innovative company" (six years in a row by Fortune magazine). Coming soon, the feature film: Alex Gibney's "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room," a documentary seen at Sundance, goes into national release next month. As long as you're not among those whose 401(k)'s and pensions were wiped out, it's morbidly entertaining. In one surreal high point, Mr. Lay likens investigations of Enron to terrorist attacks on America. For farce, there's the sight of a beaming Alan Greenspan as he accepts the "Enron Award for Distinguished Public Service" only days after Enron has confessed to filing five years of bogus financial reports.

That's a damn good start, and Rich's column only gets better.

Revisiting the Enron story as it re-emerges in 2005 is to be reminded of just how much the Enron culture has continued to shape the Bush administration long after the company itself imploded and the Lays were eighty-sixed from the White House Christmas card list.

Rich reminds us that, like the Bush administration, Enron made extensive use of PR faux news--in at least one instance Lay himself escorted a group of Wall Street big shots through a "trading room" that was really just a bunch of employees playing make believe. Enron treated the press was treated like lepers (maybe because there was always the possibility of the curtain being pulled back to reveal--well, the empty shell that Enron was), etc. etc. and so on. Rich nicely compares Enron's efforts with the latest George W. traveling Hadecol/Social Security privitization tour--I guess I haven't been paying too much attention, since I'm well aware of the farce, but I had no idea that the "town hall meetings" were rehearsed to the extent they are (a stand-in for the dauphin irons out the details with the "citizens" the night before the real airhead shows up).

And Rich tells me something else that doesn't surprise me, but which I also didn't know:

At last weekend's Gridiron dinner, Mr. Bush made a joke about how "most" of his good press on Social Security came from Armstrong Williams, and the Washington press corps yukked it up.

Gee, that reminds me of another "joke" I heard coming from his piehole.

But while the media whores and their pimps in government "yuk it up," the fact is that Ken Lay--and HIS comrades in corporate greed--just might take the air out of the balloon. Because I don't think the public is all that interested in devoting large amounts of otherwise free time to "investing." Free time is already scarce enough in this economy, if you DO have a job. And if you've got extra income (yeah, right), there are plenty of financial instruments in the market already that you can gamble on. Finally, Lay, Ebbers, Kozlowski, Scrushy, Winnick, et al, make it clear that even a reasonably well-educated, prudent investor can get duped and lose a bundle.

I don't know if the chickens are coming home to roost yet--but it's getting later in the day than the Bush administration realizes...