Hightower Lowdown

The more you look under the Enron log, the more squirming uglies you find. Among those already uncovered are: the cooking of books to deceive investors; the creation of myriad offshore partnerships that were personal bonanzas for top execs; the bullying of accountants who dared to question its Ponzi scheme; the manhandling of 401(k) accounts to lock employees into a pension death-spiral while top executives sold off their own Enron stock . . . and so much more.

But now we’ve uncovered another squirmy that might be the ugliest yet. Guess what service Enron was selling to other corporations? Management expertise! And there was no shortage of customers, as Qwest, Eli Lilly, Lockheed Martin, and others signed up to learn from the master how to finagle for fun and profit.

Enron’s gimmicks were marketed with slide presentations and sales materials that offered corrupt techniques packaged in corporate-speak, with such titles as “reverse pre-pay,” “blend and extend,” and “tilted curve.”

Enron is the poster boy of the corrupt “new economy,” which manipulates the entire system so a few can profit at the expense of the many. Such Lords of Wall Street as Merrill Lynch and J.P. Morgan Chase continue to offer essentially the same services as Enron did, substituting manipulation for management.