printKen Lay is dead at age 64—of a heart attack. That’s no surprise. While the smarmy, smart-aleck libertarian will mock those of us who think the man’s death was inadvertently caused by the state’s persecution, it is undeniably true that the heart reacts to stress like no other organ. “Broken-Heart Syndrome” is real and well-documented, confirm scientists at Johns Hopkins.
I stand by what I said earlier this year when the people’s prosecutor hoisted his pitchfork and lunged for this man: self-righteous and preening for the cameras, US government lawyers did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the men at the helm of this once-fabulous corporation intentionally made predictions that didn’t pan out, or that their exuberant optimism, which translated—if my recollection serves me—into aggressive bookkeeping, was intended to deceive and defraud.
Bill Anderson stated the case against Enron’s alternating CEOs best. In “Is Ken Lay Really a Criminal?” he wrote: “the case is not about what historically has been considered criminal behavior. Instead, Lay and Skilling were convicted because Enron became a colossal business failure.”
Best to sum the cause of death was Lay’s pastor. Said Steve Wende of Houston’s First United Methodist Church: “[Ken’s] heart simply gave out.”