As I look forward to sitting in for a couple of hours this afternoon during the direct examination of former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling in Houston federal court, attorney Paul Fisher and former Amoco economist Jim Johnston provide this interesting Heartland Institute article (hat tip Professor Bainbridge) that defends Skilling and Enron, and hits on many of the same points that I have made over the past two years (here, here, here, here, and here, to cite just a few) about the misguided nature of the Enron-related prosecutions. Fisher and Johnston’s thoughtful piece concludes with the following observation:

The Enron story is reminiscent of an earlier political attack on an energy company during the Great Depression of the 1930s. New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt was making a political issue out of Samuel Insull, the CEO of Commonwealth Edison in Chicago. The matter helped get FDR elected president in 1932 but forced the ComEd holding company into bankruptcy, even though Insull and his associates were subsequently acquitted of all charges.
We hope the Enron jury will show the same wisdom as the jury in the Samuel Insull case and reject the politically inspired attack on energy risk management. Maybe in time efficient risk management will return to the natural gas and electricity industries. Energy consumers will be the prime beneficiaries.