The U.S. Congress has begun a massive investigation of the collapse and bankruptcy of the Enron Corporation. Thousands of employees of Enron have not only lost their jobs but in many cases have lost their 401k pension funds. The 7th largest corporation in American has been accused of misleading its investors by using overseas subsidiaries to hide more than $1 Billion in debt and filing false and misleading information with securities regulators.

As the price of Enron stock started to fall, this corporation put a "freeze" on employee sales of Enron's stock from their 401k accounts. The upper management of the company was not subjected to this "freeze". While their fellow employees were locked into their Enron stock upper management sold hundred of millions of dollars of Enron stocks and Enron stock options.

Ken Lay, the CEO of the Texas based Enron, sold $100 million of his Enron stock during 2001 and sold over $26 million of Enron stock during a time when he was publicly telling his employees that their corporation was on solid ground. During this period he even encouraged his fellow employee's to buy more Enron stock even thought he continue to sell his own corporation's stock. Enron's accounting firm, Arthur Anderson, seems to have gone along with these deceptions. How could this have happened?

For years Ken Lay has bought and sold politicians in the Congress and in state legislatures in order to push his ideology of privatization of energy and electric power deregulation. Enron was George W. Bush's biggest donor and gave over $560,000 to Bush's gubernatorial and presidential campaigns. Arthur Anderson and Enron's law firm Vinson and Elkins were elite "Pioneer" fundraisers who moved another $400,000 or more dollars into George W Bush's presidential campaign. Ken Lay was also a "Pioneer" fundraiser for Bush and had extensive personal contacts and meetings with George W. Bush. What did Ken Lay get for his donations?

According to critics, a great deal. In the 1980's and early 1990's, Ken Lay was able - using his political connections - to persuade the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to deregulate natural gas. This allowed Enron, one of largest natural gas companies in the U.S., to take advantage of its position in the market place. It also set in motion Lay's much bigger plan to push electric deregulation on a state-by-state basis and on a federal level. Lay was one of the first to push the idea of taking over the electric industry and turning into an international casino where people like Ken Lay could control and manipulate a commodity, which was once considered a public service.

Ken Lay's Enron played a major role in lobbying electric deregulation in the Texas, Tennessee, Oregon, and Pennsylvania state legislatures. I even spotted them here in CT pushing their deregulation schemes when the top leadership of the CT legislature and Governor Rowland rolled over and passed a electric "restructuring" bill mostly orchestrated by an army of lobbyists fueled by millions of dollars from energy companies.

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