Our own two U.S. Senators have participated in this deregulation of our economy and have acted as enablers to those who want to deregulate and privatize our society. Joe Lieberman, who Ralph Nader has described as a senator "who has not seen a weapons system, an insurance company, or a drug company he doesn't like", is a case in point. In the early 1990's Lieberman lead the charge to prevent the Federal Accounting Standards Board (FASB) from instituting proper accounting of stock options.

One of the ways Enron and other corporations are overstating their profits is by not including the stock options that they issue to their top executives against their profits. These stock options do not show up as a cost on a corporation's financial statements. Lieberman with the support of big corporations prevented the FASB from implementing this change. Enron and other corporations used this accounting practice to deceive investors and employees.

Senator Chris Dodd was the co-sponsor of the Private Securities Litigations Reform Act of 1995. This law makes it harder for people to sue a company or its auditors if a company goes bankrupt after cooking the books and engaging in deception. Under this law auditors are liable for only those losses that were caused by the auditors. Under the old law the auditors could be sued in court for all losses caused by the bankruptcy. Some critics think that Enron's auditors, Arthur Anderson (of Colonial Reality fame) may have shredded documents in part because of this law. If they can hide their complicity with Enron in deceiving investors and securities regulators by destroying a paper trail to their complicity they may be able to limit their liability using the law that Senator Dodd co-sponsored.

All of these matters are not academic to the many people who lost much of their pension money or jobs because of these practices and corruption. The Enron debacle has had detrimental effect on the entire economy and has effected many other organizations across the country. The Enron bankruptcy has even affected the CT Resource Recovery Authority (CRRA), which runs a trash to energy plant in Hartford CT. In a complicated scheme cooked up by Enron and CRRA, the CRRA board and management loaned Enron $220 Million so that Enron would buy electricity from them. That money is now gone and the rates charged to burn trash in Hartford have increased 31%.

Connecticut's Attorney General has raised some serious questions about this scheme and has called it a questionable "unsecured loan". Recently some news outlets have reported similar schemes involving Enron in other states. How many more Enron debacles will it take before the American people wake up to the fact that they are being lied to by America's corporations and manipulated by the politicians who are owned by these corporations? Enron is just one of many corporations that is overvalued and hides its true earnings through deception and clever accounting practices (consider Tyco or Global Crossing).

Some economists say that the entire stock market is overvalued by between 8 to 10 trillion dollars. They call this a stock bubble. If that bubbles ever bursts the retirement and savings of countless Americans will be lost or be worth dimes on the dollar. The Enron debacle will then no longer be looked back at as a corruption scandal but will be seen as the beginning of something far worse. Mike De Rosa is a member of the Connecticut Green Party and a candidate for the CT State Senate in 2002.

Email the author at smderosa@erols.com.