As the public and lawmakers struggle for answers in the wake of the Enron disaster, several high-ranking insiders from the Houston-based energy concern are beginning to acknowledge what they’ve suspected for some time: the largest corporate collapse in US history was the work of an intelligent higher being.
The theory, which they’re calling intelligent design of a higher being, is similar to the intelligent design theory. This holds that living things were created by a purposeful being (not necessarily God, but perhaps someone quite nice).
Intelligent design has gained considerable momentum and is currently at the heart of a debate raging within the Ohio school board: should the theory be taught alongside evolution in classrooms?
In the case of Enron, proponents of the idea concede that corporate malfeasance is not the same as, say, the unexplained creation of multi-cell organisms, or at least not exactly the same. But they insist a human being could not be responsible. Their argument is straightforward: how could this company with its billions of dollars in revenues, its incredibly high visibility, its board populated by knowledgeable, well-respected professionals, and with its experience of dealing with rigorous regulatory obligations – how could it possibly manage to self-destruct at the hands of humans alone?
‘None of us could have caused this. I know Ken Lay personally. I know Jeff Skilling, and I sort of knew Fastow, although he didn’t really like me. But I know this for sure: they couldn’t possibly be responsible for all of this. It is beyond any of us.’ So said one former Enron employee who wouldn’t give his name or title but did say he had a really big office.
A significant number of influential lawmakers, including one from Ohio, say that while they are loath to give anyone a free ride, there is at least some rationale behind the intelligent design of a higher being concept. ‘When you’ve got something this big, you have to ask yourself, could a human being, or beings, be responsible for it, even if they contributed money to members of Congress and the president? To me, that’s sort of hard to believe,’ says a member of the House sub-committee on non-foliating plant farming subsidies.
At the heart of the argument are Enron’s intricate and infamous partnerships, which for so long shielded heavy debt from investors and helped prop up the company’s earnings. Because only two professional economists in Mangalore, India and one in Lithuania are capable of adequately describing these partnerships without using flow charts, many believe the Enron model could only be the work of an intelligent higher being – or of the professors, two of whom indeed claim to be intelligent higher beings themselves.
Just what sort of higher being might be behind the fall of Enron, however, remains a point of great contention. Those in the God camp believe what happened was a message – a lesson on hubris, greed and the importance of diversification in retirement plans.
Others see the hand of a nefarious being, perhaps Satan – someone or something who/that maliciously wanted to take down a great company (possibly two if you throw in Andersen) and sully the reputations of honorable executives and accountants.
And there is a small but vocal group convinced that those responsible for the debacle are beings from another planet.
‘What we know is this: none of us are smart of enough to have pulled this off. At least I’m not. And even if some of us were, too many people would have had to look the other way,’ says a former Andersen accountant, who adds that she’s more than ready to testify openly before Congress about the intelligent design of a higher being theory.
