Enron super-con man, alleged, Jeff Skilling, explained today that the Enron bubble need never have burst if only investors had held their confidence in Enron’s outrageous marketplace success. On paper.

I recently saw a presentation by one of the authors of ENRON: THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM. While this journalist did not mince words regarding the criminality of those “smarts,” there did seem to be an underlying appreciation that Enron’s market innovations were “marvelous and novel” methods of trading energy stocks. Never mind that the only function that Enron served was to squeeze more money from between the supply and the demand.

So the world at large is responsible for bringing Enron crashing down? That is the Neocon economic M.O. isn’t it? Hold up the economy on purely the fumes of consumer confidence. If the economy falters, it’s the fault of consumers too afraid to shoulder more credit card debt.

Isn’t this like the bank-robber saying that if only no-one would call the cops, the robbery would be ongoing?

Or isn’t this quite like the Emperor’s New Clothes? So long as no one tells the emperor he has no clothes, the Emperial procession could still be processing forward, albeit naked.