There are a couple of points to be made. I suspect that much of the regulation that was rolled back was pre-existing Roosevelt era regulation that was enacted to prevent abuses like those abuses performed by Enron. I think a close inspection of the situation will find that many of he regulations that were rolled back had a purpose ... to keep the free market a little fairer.

As hard as this is to believe you understate Ken Lay's influence in Washington. Longtime Frontline viewers will remember a show where it is revealed that Ken Lay is performing personell interviews for the Bush administration as the Bush administration is looking for a new FERC head. Talk about conflict of interest, he was interviewing his own regulator!!! The highlight of the show was when the Frontline host told the existing Clinton appointed FERC head that he was being replaced and to, in effect, sharpen up his cv. If someone can find the clip it makes for riviting, sad, funny television.

I guess each generation must learn for itself because the kernel of one generation's experience is difficult to pass on to the next.

" A rotten barrel spoils all the apples."

"The Corporation has no rights that a Natural Person is bound

to respect." We need a Supreme Courtload of justices who

understand that fact and will so rule.

"willful lack of ignorance"?

I object to the description of this as "the age of deregulation". The United States is the most regulated place on the planet, our only competition being maybe Europe. And Shrub & Co. have done nothing to slow the increasing spiral of regulation, law, and other governmental control on the body politic. What the current bozos in power have done is not deregulation, which is the reduction or elimination of regulation, but regulation in favor of certain industries that provide generous political contributions which is not the same thing at all. I've always found it interesting that I could be sued if someone slips and falls on my sidewalk which I don't own because the city has taken an easment for it but I cannot hold a corporation liable if my personal data which they are controlling is then used to perpetrate identity theft on me. Why is that?

To understand Enron, you need to go back a century to the trust busting days. Enron was as big and powerful as Standard Oil without John D. Rockefeller's business acumen. The government broke up the trusts because they were too large and getting to powerful. Like the 800 pound gorilla who can sit anywhere he wants, size engenders power. This nostrum applies to corporations and governments.

If you want to stop the excesses, both governmental and corporate, we need to make things smaller and more managable.

"Willful lack of ignorance" should, of course, have been "willful ignorance."

Thanks for pointing that out, and I've made the change.

It's the system, stupid. The bad apples are the fruits of deregulation and the corruption of government by corporate moles planted their to destroy oversight. It began with Reagan. When will it end?