Good (news) Friday: Enron’s "masters of the universe’ found GUILTY as sin!

The jury’s verdicts help to close a notorious chapter in the history of America’s publicly traded companies…Appeals aside, the end of the trial will mark the end of a dark era.

[Rep. Michael Oxley (R-Ohio), co-author of the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation, which was enacted in the wake of Enron’s collapse to make company executives more accountable.]

Given the litany of corporate scandals that have unfolded in recent years (WorldCom Inc., Tyco, Adelphia Communications, etc), chances are that, until yesterday, Enron remained a four-letter word only to those who suffered historic reversals of fortune when it collapsed almost five years ago. But the jury’s guilty verdicts against its former leaders Ken Lay (L) and Jeff Skilling (R) – on a battery of fraud and conspiracy charges – reminded the entire world of the unprecedented and pervasive scope of corruption and greed that led to Enron’s demise.

Indeed, notwithstanding subsequent scandals, none of them has had a more devastating impact of the U.S. market, which included $60 billion in shareholder losses. Unfortunately, the impact Enron’s collapse had on the market was surpassed only by the impact it had on the lives of its employees, which included eradicating almost $2.1 billion in pension plans overnight and rendering 5,600 people unemployed.

Finally, though hardly just compensation, the good news is that all of those who felt defrauded by Enron executives can take consolation in the fact that the 64-year-old Lay (who is facing 165 years) and the 52-year-old Skilling (who is facing 185 years) will spend the rest of their lives in prison. And, ironically enough, the Judge set the day of reckoning for these two crooks who perpetrated the worst corporate crime in U.S. history for 9/11.

NOTE: After yesterday’s verdict, Lay said he was “shocked”. And during his trial, he said – with no ironic appreciation – that he was being prosecuted for “doing business as usual.” But let us hope that his and Skilling’s sublime fate disabuses all white-collar criminals of their patently fatuous presumption that – because they swindle billions from stock portfolios and pension plans – they are somehow smarter and more honorable than street thugs who steal nickles and dimes (by comparison) from banks and purses. Indeed, as the federal prosecutors who laid out the case against them warned after the verdicts were handed down:

You can’t lie to shareholders, you can’t put yourselves in front of your employees’ interests. No matter how rich and powerful you are, you have to play by the rules….This verdict encourages us…to continue to combat corruption wherever we find it.

ENDNOTE: Britain’s Law Lords defied their stodgy reputation this week by issuing landmark rulings in two divorce cases that advance the cause of women’s rights to such degree they make the way Divorce Courts in America treat women seem positively atavistic. Click here to read my good-news article on these rulings at CNN….

Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, Enron trial verdicts