The Smartest Person In The Room

This is the title of a documentary about the Enron Corporation. It comes from a meeting of Enron executives. During a question and answer segment a question card was given to Kenneth Lay. It said, "Mr. Lay are you on crack? My follow up is, if you are not on crack would you consider taking it." Months before the company stock was announced as worthless, the employees saw the writing on the wall. They knew that the men at the top were blowing smoke up the shareholder's collective asses.

The news yesterday states that Ken Lay Is Shocked At Verdict.

Can you believe that this pleasant looking, smiling middle aged gentleman ruined the lives and savings of tens of thousands of good folks.

Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling were known as visionaries, hands-on executives, corporate titans directing the high-flying ship at Wall Street darling Enron Corp. Add another title: convicted felons.

"Certainly we're surprised," a shaken Lay said Thursday after a jury capped a four-month-long fraud and conspiracy trial and in its sixth day of deliberations returned guilty verdicts against him and Skilling. "I think it's more appropriate to say we're shocked. This is not the outcome we expected."

Besides all six counts in the main trial, Lay, Enron's founder, also was convicted of four charges of bank fraud and making false statements to banks in a separate non-jury trial before U.S. District Judge Sim Lake related to his personal finances.

Skilling was convicted of 19 counts of fraud, conspiracy and insider trading at a trial spawned by one of the biggest business scandals in U.S. history, the toppling of a high-profile energy trader that once was the nation's seventh-largest company.

"Obviously, I'm disappointed," the former Enron chief executive said. "But that's the way the system works."

Lake set Sept. 11 as sentencing date for Skilling and Lay. Legal experts, while not questioning the pair eventually would be spending time behind bars, predicted another fierce courtroom battle over the duration of their likely prison time.

Skilling faces a maximum of 185 years in prison. For Lay, the fraud and conspiracy convictions carry a combined maximum punishment of 45 years. The bank fraud case adds 120 years, 30 years on each of the four counts.

While the reality is the sentences will be considerably less under federal sentencing guidelines, for Lay, 64, a likely double-digit term could be the equivalent of a life sentence, said Kirby Behre, a former federal prosecutor in Washington who wrote the government's white- collar sentencing guide.

"They're both facing 20-plus years," he said. "You do 20 years, and that's entirely conceivable, you're looking at life. And people don't age well in prison.

"Lay may catch a break, but Skilling doesn't have that. He's looking well north of 20 years."

It sounds like these guys believe their own lies.