More glaze for your eyes.
Yes: more on Enron. James K. Galbraith, this time, whose basic point is simplistic and charmingly naïve (but idealistic—and I like my politics charming, and naïvely idealistic), but whose angle of attack is commendable. So many conservative commentators (to paint with a broad, broad brush for a moment) have shrugged at the Enron meltdown, claiming not to see any cause for political concern. After all, they say, Enron asked for help, and the administration didn’t give it to them. See? Case closed. But, as Galbraith points out, the point at that point wasn’t to save the company. The damage had already been done, the henhouse already looted, the cash yanked out and socked away—and all with the complicity and willing aid of the Bush administration and the Clinton administration and more members of Congress than you’d ever want in the same place at the same time. The scandal isn’t the illegalities they tried to get away with (though those are horrific, and endemic: “There are a hundred more Enrons waiting to happen,” you keep reading, and no one seems too surprised by this statement); it’s all the crap they managed to get legalized, with a wink and a wad of cash.
At least this much of Galbraith’s Veblenian vision is coming true: there’s a lot of second thoughts out there about the wisdom of applying the brutish volatility of passes for a free market to services that ought to be constant, consistent, and secure, like power (and pensions). —Except, oops, Texas is deregulating its energy market, and another 22 states are tottering in its wake.
Hey. I’m sure California was just a fluke.
