Enron Money Woes Raise Concerns

How fitting that the sanctimonious Kenneth Lay, who arrogantly lectured California’s electricity consumers this past spring on the “realities” of the deregulated 21st-century energy environment, has seen his company fall prey to that very same arrogance [“A Visionary Fallen From Grace,” James Flanigan, Nov. 10].

While Californians allow themselves a wry smile over such news, the U.S. Justice Department should be building a case to “escort” Lay and his cohort Jeffrey Skilling to a prison cell for pocketing some $200 million from converting stock options at prices vastly over-inflated by their “cooking the books” at Enron over the last five years.

Noel Johnson

Glendale

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California taxpayers are out of billions of dollars due to a failed concept that deregulating the electric industry would save us money by bringing us the “benefits” of a free market managed by private enterprise.

Enron, one of the free market energy companies which we were supposed to depend on to give us electricity at a reasonable cost, has apparently just “lost” $1.2 billion in equity along with an “unexpected” loss of $618 million [“Enron in Takeover Talks With Dynegy,” Nov. 8]. The implications are clear--Californians have been gouged and one of the companies receiving the new found wealth has amazingly “lost” it.

Clearly, private industry is not the panacea. How about going back to a regulated monopoly?

Stephen Rynas

Duarte