Category — Accounting

Jeff Skilling — now cooling his heels in federal prison — may seem like an odd topic in a presidential election year, but his sad tale should be front and center in the minds of U.S. voters come November. Of everything the United States has to offer the world, our greatest gift may be our historical allegiance to the rule of law. The fact that Skilling ever ended up behind bars calls that allegiance into question.

Those who participated in putting Skilling in the pen — politicians, pundits, prosecutors, big pension funds and an off-the reservation federal judge — allowed Houston mobocracy and Washington politics to trump the rule of law. This year, the temptation will be overpowering to repeat the excesses of the Enron investigation and trial as payback for the subprime mortgage mess. [Read more →]