Enron Quotations

I happen to represent Enron here in Houston. We have many good corporate citizens here in Houston. Enron happened to have been one.

But indeed a market like California is not good for Enron.

Enron had already collapsed and filed for bankruptcy protection by the beginning of 2002. But despite complaints from short sellers that corporations had used accounting gimmickry to inflate their profits, many investors thought the crisis at Enron was an isolated case.

I remember when I did my Enron film, my executive producers at the time felt very strongly that I should mock the Enron executives more viciously because everybody wanted that moment.

Enron Field in Houston, the Trans World Dome in St. Louis and PSINet Stadium in Baltimore are just three of the modern-day coliseums named for companies that have found new homes in bankruptcy court.

During the Enron debacle, it was workers who took the pounding, not bankers. Not only did Enron employees lose their jobs, many lost their retirement savings. That's because they were at the bottom of the investing food chain.

Things that have happened with Enron and companies like that, where they've squandered their employees' pension funds, I think it has brought a new level of anxiety. People don't feel like they can trust their employer.

One thing prosecutors can expect to get from Causey is testimony that he met with Ken Lay during that period and made him aware of how deep the plight was at Enron. By the time of Lay's return, Enron was almost like the Titanic after it hit the iceberg.

Let's be direct here. These books were cooked by Lay and the other top executives who put hundreds of millions of dollars in their pockets, while the employees of Enron were victimized and hundreds of thousands of other investors lost billions of dollars.

One of the strongest parts of our case has to do with the fact that Ken Lay never sold one share of Enron stock that he was not compelled to sell.

My concern is for current and former Enron employees and other stakeholders, and I feel it is in their best interest for me to step down from the board.

My concern is for current and former Enron employees and other stockholders, and I feel it is in their best interest for me to step down from the board.

Poor J.P. Morgan. The company has got nailed on everything from Enron to Argentina and bad loans, ... But if we see the economy recover, the financial services will do well.

If we do that, then Enron will become the leading company in the world.

I believe that they had determined the capital markets were closed to Enron at this time.

But even when liability has been imposed, it has ultimately been paid by a combination of corporate directors and officers liability insurance. Settlements in the Enron case may indicate a change to history because individual directors at Enron had to make significant payments from their personal assets.

If the government cannot explain what happened at Enron and why it was wrong in terms a jury of 12 laypersons can understand, then the government will likely fail to obtain convictions.

I was caught up in the Enron story. I was in denial. I was trying to protect myself.

Larry, I spent probably most of my professional life helping to build Enron Corporation. I don't think there was anyone that was as shocked by the - by the collapse of the company as I was.

I think everybody is covering their posteriors with the Enron scandal and it was very convenient that Sept. 11 came along to deflect the fact that they should never have been in the White House in the first place. What happened in the election was completely corrupt.

I think the market is struggling from the Enron affair.

Merrill knew full well that Enron was trying to structure deals so that debt was hidden off balance sheet and cash flow was manufactured,

Well, actually, I had been working as a consultant to former companies of Enron, or predecessor companies of Enron and, so, I joined in 1990 to really start our wholesale merchant business.

Wouldn't it be great if all of Osama bin Laden's money was tied-up in Enron stock?

Was I believer in Enron Corporation? Yes, sir, I was.

We can't afford to wait, ... We must restore integrity to our investment and pension systems and strengthen government oversight of them. We cannot allow what happened to Enron employees happen to the rest of America.

The Enron scandal continues. The U.S. Senate has announced they are going to subpoena Ken Lay and make him testify. Apparently Lay received the subpoena this morning and then, out of habit, immediately shredded it.

Are you getting a big kick out of the Enron scandal? I find this interesting that whenever a big crisis starts, people start showing up in church. So, Ken Lay shows up in church this weekend. Church officials are still looking for the collection plates.

To the outside world, Enron appeared to be a picture of corporate success. Inside the doors of Enron, things were terribly wrong.

Every coach, every executive, every leader: They all know right from wrong. Even those Enron guys. When someone uncovers a scandal in their company, I don't think they can say, "I didn't know that was going on." They're just saying they're too dumb to do their job! And if they really are too dumb, then why are they getting paid millions of dollars to do it? They know what's going on.

Creative accounting is an absolute curse to a civilization. One could argue that double-entry bookkeeping was one of history's great advances. Using accounting for fraud and folly is a disgrace. In a democracy, it often takes a scandal to trigger reform. Enron was the most obvious example of a business culture gone wrong in a long, long time.

We acted properly and with integrity in all Enron matters, ... We have not knowingly assisted Enron or any other company in misrepresenting facts about their financial condition.

The positive tone has more to do with the economic data that showed some signs of life in the economy. We've got through the Enron debacle and some selling that represented investors looking to lock in profits earlier on. Now we're starting to get a serious picture of what next year looks like, and it's probably the first serious step toward an upward move in the market.

the powerful lesson from Enron for me is the power of self delusion and how people rationalise and deceive themselves. And I think when Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling say they are innocent now, as they do with their trial approaching in early 2006, they mean it on a certain level. One smart financial observer said to me that he's never met the CEO of a fraudulent company who didn't come to believe in what he'd created.

WorldCom could occur in any era, it's more traditional book cooking. It's hard to think of another one of these cases really is like Enron in the sense that it raises fundamental questions of accounting and financial reporting.

We've all got to work to restore business confidence...but I believe that longer term we may look at Enron as being a positive as opposed to a negative, ... It may lead to greater transparency.

Due to the multiple inquiries and investigations, some of which are focused on me personally, I believe that my involvement has become a distraction. ... My concern is for current and former Enron employees and other stakeholders, and I feel it is in their best interest for me to step down from the board,

I share your commitment to conducting a thorough investigation of what, until recently, was the largest bankruptcy filing in our nation's history, ... In light of recent news reports and testimony at this week's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations hearing on the role of financial institutions in the collapse of Enron Corporation, I believe these two individuals could provide the committee with information critical to our investigation.

I've been hearing more workers -- including former Enron workers -- say they now wish they'd had a union.

Isn't that a little bit ridiculous? You've got a guy walking down the street and he sees some unfriendly offices, and to make a leap from that to say we're talking about Enron -- that's really a stretch. They've chosen to make a campaign of this but they have no basis ... other than that they seem to have some complaints from their membership.

The story took on an importance later that it did not deserve originally. Whether I wrote that story or not, Enron would have gone bankrupt, investors would have lost billions of dollars and thousands of people would have lost their jobs. I just picked up on an underlying skepticism. If you had told me then that the company would go under by the end of the year, I would have never believed it. I was as naive as the rest of us.

These documents suggest that Bush was acting as promoter in chief for Enron and its business interests at a time when he was getting ready to raise money for his run for president,

These books were cooked by Lay and the other top executives, who put hundreds of millions of dollars in their pockets, while the employees of Enron were victimized and hundreds of thousands of other investors lost billions of dollars,

The same folks who today defend high gasoline prices as the product of a free market said exactly the same thing about energy prices in the West when we now know ... Enron was manipulating the market at full throttle and reaping billions in profits.

Rather, at the time, it seemed that all Merchant Energy companies were sucked down by the Enron undertow.

As of today, it's as if Enron had never happened.

Telecom is where people thought the next Enron was going to be, and they weren't disappointed.

Enron and 9/11 marked the end of an era of individual freedom and the beginning of personal responsibility.

Enron depends upon government policies to enhance their bottom line in lots of ways, ... The company relies upon this kind of access to government.

Enron got in trouble with too much debt. Investors and analysts didn't realize how much debt they had because it was hidden.

Enron in its simplest form was a stark and vivid lesson that a company could comply with generally accepted accounting principles and totally deceive investors at the same time.

Enron is a good story. It's in a lot of different businesses areas; they are in the broadband business, for instance. They're really diversifying their asset base. And obviously, within the energy sector in general, earnings look very strong this year; this should be a solid play in that area. I don't have a target price, but it's a long-term hold, a core type of investment as well.

Enron is a one-time occurrence, ... Trading didn't put it down but rogue financing. They improperly financed a lot of overseas hard assets and didn't disclose the impact to earnings and balance sheets.

Enron is a one-time occurrence. Trading didn't put it down but rogue financing. They improperly financed a lot of overseas hard assets and didn't disclose the impact to earnings and balance sheets.

Enron is providing the counterforce right now. It's undermining a number of industries such as utilities, banks, insurance and energy companies.

Enron is synonymous with fraud everywhere in America. I don't think he'll get more of a fair or less of a fair trial in Kansas than he will in Houston.

Enron is truly an authentic emblem of corporate corruption and will serve as an example for quite some time.

Enron's deceptions were shocking, and equally shocking was the extent to which respected U.S. financial institutions like Chase, Citigroup, and Merrill Lynch helped Enron carry out its deceptions and mislead investors and analysts about the company's finances,

Enron's practice of using prepaid transactions to understate debt and overstate cash flow from operations made its financial statement look much stronger; that in turn helped Enron maintain its investment rate credit rating and support -- even boost -- its share price,

Enron was a wake-up call for all Americans.

Are you familiar with 9/11? Building 7? You know what was in there? All the Enron stuff. I guess that building went down on its own.

This is probably the best documentary about the whole corporate malfeasance. I'm sure all the money lost by the people in Park City over the whole Enron thing would keep the film series afloat for years.

Indictments today are a significant milestone in our unabated efforts to expose and punish the vast array of criminal conduct related to the collapse of Enron Corporation,

I'm out talking about this company seven days a week, 24 hours a day, with nothing to hide. We're not Enron -- we're a 110-year-old company that has a great record of high-quality leadership and a culture of integrity.

In this age of Enron and a focus on increased accountability demanded by the public, particularly as related to government, for Denver not to have such an ordinance is intolerable.

It was actually in retrospect a pretty meek story. It didn't say that the company is a fraud and going to go bankrupt in nine months. In fact, if you had said to me at the time that Enron is going to go under, I'd have said, 'Are you kidding?' It just didn't quite make sense. In retrospect I fault myself for not questioning it more than I did.

They certainly raise questions about how far Bush went to help Enron and what other favors he might have done.

In the beginning, Enron looked good on paper,

Chase concocted the fraud with Enron. Chase was right in bed with Enron to structure these transactions to hide Enron's debt,

The retail sales number today reinforces the notion that the consumer hasn't fallen apart. Today's market is encouraging from the perspective that there is less of an Enron hangover.

They literally got employees of Enron to join in with them,

An insolvent company -- in this case, Enron -- is not allowed to make payments to stockholders.

An insolvent company - in this case, Enron - is not allowed to make payments to stockholders.

An insolvent company in this case, Enron is not allowed to make payments to stockholders.

Any company out there that has some accounting concerns, either real or imagined, is getting hit today. There's fear out there that maybe Enron was just the tip of the iceberg.

You've got the economy and the Enron situation, these two opposing features and it's just a question of who wins out on any given day,

The gimmickry in this bill is enough to make an Enron executive blush.

The driving factor is indeed the Enron story.

The Enron hearings aren't going to help a lot.

The ultimate relief would have been to stop the sweep-up of funds to Enron Corp. from Enron North America. The judge didn't order that, but we got the next best thing.

The major lesson to be learned from Enron is that every major bank still gets greedy,

A lesson that finance professionals had to relearn after Enron is making sure you understand how the company makes money and making sure you understand why you own stock or bond of a particular company.

As you know, Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) provisions require that firms seeking to do business with the government have a satisfactory record of business ethics and integrity. Consideration should be given to the initiation of suspension or debarment proceedings for all, or a part, of Arthur Andersen and Enron as appropriate.

Every one of these legal issues that they can get behind them I think will help the stock a lot. If they get Enron behind them, write a check and move on, that's going to be a positive.

They don't start with anywhere nearly as strong a position as this company. They were able to emerge from bankruptcy and I am confident Enron will also,

It's been a steady, slow grind down, the same thing we've been seeing for weeks, ... You have the financials getting hit hard on the Enron stories and concerns about debt. Citigroup is heavily weighted and it's having an impact on the rest of the sector.

There's a stench of burnt toast coming out of all these news reports, ... It's very, very thought contagious. And if it spreads across the techs and venture capital companies in Silicon Valley, it will make Enron look like small change.

There's a stench of burnt toast coming out of all these news reports. It's very, very thought contagious. And if it spreads across the techs and venture capital companies in Silicon Valley, it will make Enron look like small change.

How many Enron employees had these pads sitting on their desks but didn't read the quote? Or if they did read it, didn't take it to heart?

I don't want to see them left high and dry just like the Enron employees were left high and dry without any pension funds, without any retirement security,

In the Enron scandal, whistleblower Sherron Watkins is now calling herself Enron Brokovitch. She testified Ken Lay was duped by the other executives. Oh, yeah. When is the last time you got duped and made $100 million?

Because the sad fact is that the Enron Corporation and others manipulated with unfortunately great effect the energy market in the West Coast starting in 2000.

We will not rest until the wooden stake is punched through the heart of the Enron lawsuit against us.

Bush began helping Enron in the eighties.

Currently, we're finding that about 75 percent of potential jurors have anger or deep-seated hatred toward anyone associated with Enron.

The conspiracy...allowed Enron to exploit and intensify the California energy crisis and prey on energy consumers at their most vulnerable moment,

I predict that in the years ahead Enron, not Sept. 11, will come to be seen as the greater turning point in U.S. society.

The environment changed with Martha Stewart and Enron.

I think everybody is covering their [posteriors] with the Enron scandal and it was very convenient that Sept. 11 came along to deflect the fact that they should never have been in the White House in the first place. What happened in the election was completely corrupt.

What Enron was doing, what caused investors to embrace it in a rapture of baffled awe, was hiding debt.