The Media Finally Notices the Enron Tapes

From The Times today:

One energy trader gloats about cheating "poor grandmothers." Another suggests shutting down a power plant in order to drive up electricity prices. A third, hearing of a fire under a transmission line that caused a power failure, shouts "burn baby, burn." Another says that he would like to see Kenneth Lay — then Enron's chief executive — wind up as energy secretary in the new Bush administration.

An exhaustive study released by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in March 2003 confirmed what everyone had long suspected — that Enron and other major energy companies manipulated California's energy markets in 2000 and 2001 in ways that cost the state billions. Now comes the most graphic evidence yet of the cynicism and ruthlessness with which Enron's floor traders, presumably with the endorsement of their superiors, rigged the market.

The evidence is in taped conversations among Enron traders, obtained from the Justice Department by a public utility district near Seattle that wants to recover what it says are $2 billion in unjust profits. The tapes, which CBS broadcast last week, are remarkable not only for their cynicism but also their raw profanity — the average energy trader appears to have a vocabulary consisting of a half-dozen obscenities as well as "cool," "wow" and "awesome" — as in wouldn't it be "awesome" if Mr. Lay got the energy post. But the traders are not politically stupid. One is heard predicting that President-elect George Bush would oppose caps on wholesale electricity prices — which indeed Mr. Bush did, until the crisis got completely out of hand.

The tapes are the equivalent of the cynical e-mail messages in which Henry Blodget and other Wall Street analysts acknowledged that the stocks they were peddling were mostly dogs. Those messages ruined careers and led to big fines. Whether the Enron tapes will have the same effect remains to be seen. In a case before the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, California is trying to recover $8.9 billion in refunds from Enron and others. The state will not get nearly that — most of the companies are now bankrupt — but the tapes can't hurt their efforts.

Growl, hiss.