My questions are these: (1) Did the Enron gang conduct business with an eye toward simply making an honest profit?
(2) Did they do business with the intent of deceiving, hence lawbreaking? We can't look inside the hearts and souls of the
Enron gang. We can only apply the facts as we know them against Enron's actions.
As notorious safecracker Willy Sutton once said, he only robbed banks because that's where the money was.
Second, attempting to read the minds of Enron's traders as to their motives or 'criminal intent' is a laughable waste of time. I've traded with these guys (and, yes, 98+% of them are men) for years and I'll tell you right now what their motive is, every day: make a profit...which, oddly, is my motive, too.
When the loonies in the Calbanian legislature dreampt up that faux-'deregulation' scheme, they guaranteed -- guaranteed -- that the citizens were going to get their pockets picked all day, every day, if the power mkts EVER became even slightly unbalanced. And you'd better believe that every decent energy trader in America (elsewhere, too, probably) was out for a piece of their pocketbooks, yr hmbl srvnt included. The nearest thing I've ever seen to a dead layup lock cinch.
A Calpine trader famously (well, in the NY Slimes anyway) characterized trading with the bureaudorks in ISO and with the waterboys as 'playing poker with second-graders'. He was far too charitable; it was playing poker with kindergartners with Alzheimer's.
You'll notice that Grayout Doofus doesn't ever even allege specific 'criminal' (sic) acts. That's because he cannot; the rules the legislature and the other assorted Calbanian morons implemented were (still are, btw) so self-contradictory that not even a Philadelphia lawyer could tell you which practices were lawful and which not. Some number of people are whining that Enron, Calpine, Duke and the boys 'gamed' the system. You bet your sweet butt they did -- which is the best possible argumenr for prohibiting incompetent hustlebuck shysters and Pollyanna do-gooders from even running for office or otherwise being employed by taxpayers. If you should invent a game where the rules are not clearly defined AND you can only win under, in essence, perfect circumstances, you've only yourself to blame when you get your clock cleaned (notice how Grayout now is trying to crawfish on the state's long-term power contracts? what did you expect?)
Gitmo's got it right. The retail price caps were the fuse on the dynamite; well before NG reached $70/MMBTU @ Topock in the second week in December, the whole market was going to blow. Curiously, even as late as early October, the dildoes could have saved the situation by simply removing the regulations and the caps and letting the market clear (which, if you don't happen to know from experience, happens in typically 48-72 hrs; the power mkts are VERY efficient, when they're allowed to be), but noooooooooo -- these clowns literally bet the ranch on a mild winter, and how bloody bright is that? Worse, they knew perfectly well in the summer that power was going to be tight, NG particularly, and took NO constructive action (made things much worse, actually).
It was the episode of the Taggart tunnel in real life, courtesy of The Doofus Who Would Be King.
I have no doubt that some deception did occur, and some practices were followed that were bad.
But that doesn't necessarily mean the bad practices did a significant amount of damage. In fact, these memos only show that such things were thought up, not that they were implemented.
But let's say for the sake of argument there are bad practices that were followed. What percentage of the total crisis is attributable to these practices? Probably relatively little of it. Enron's role was analgous to the person who sells you a $5 bottle of water in a crisis where no water was otherwise available. You don't like the fact that he overcharged you, but you're glad he was there to help you survive. If he was forced to charge normal market for the water (say $1), he'd probably keep it for himself and his family.
In short, this does not take Gray Davis off the hook for his mishandling of the electricity crisis, which created the situation making Enron's deal possible. Without the crisis, Enron could not have done what it did.
This doesn't excuse Enron, not by a long shot -- but it doesn't excuse Davis, either.
D