Bushwhacked_ Life in George W. Bush's America Large Print - Molly Ivins [91]
Ramsey blames himself.
Sitting in a booth in a freeway chain restaurant that serves the same club sandwich in Portland, Oregon, as it does in Portland, Maine, Ramsey spoke with confidence but chose his words carefully as he took the fall for a crime he didn’t commit. He used his forefinger or his fully extended hand in a slow slicing gesture to make a point. He looked you in the eye and spoke with the quiet authority common to men who have mastered their craft. You sense he would be no less confident if George W. Bush were sitting across the Formica table. But when Ramsey described being robbed by Enron, he changed. Everything changed. A visible sadness spread across his face. His eyes narrowed. Everything seemed to slow down.
“Number one: it’s my fault that I lost all that money,” Ramsey said. “I was locked out. But it wasn’t that bad. We were warned.”
There’s no number two.
On October 17, 2001, Enron locked workers out of their 401(k) plans while a new investment firm took over management of retirement accounts. Executives and directors were not locked out. They saw the company collapsing and dumped $1.1 billion in shares. By the time workers could get to their 401(k) accounts, the Enron stock they had counted on for retirement was worthless. One coincidence sure to be mentioned in shareholders’ suits is the fact that employee 401(k) losses were $1.2 billion—just $100 million shy of what Enron’s insiders walked away with. After all that, Ramsey is still willing to give Enron the benefit of the doubt. He said workers were warned about the lockout; he could have moved his stock. By the time he was locked out, his 401(k) had lost more than half its value and was down to about $500,000. But Enron had been delivering the American Dream into the accounts of its workers. The stock had fallen, but it would come back. That’s what the analysts said. That’s what Enron CEO Ken Lay said. That’s what Portland General Electric CEO Peggy Fowler said. “We were led astray,” Ramsey said.*
Ramsey gives himself some credit, for what it’s worth. A friend who knew the stock market warned him to diversify. He intended to. Then his brother ended up in the hospital in Phoenix. “I was going to pull my money out, but I had to go,” Ramsey said. “At least I was thinking in the right direction.” He was watching TV in a Phoenix hospital room when the Enron-bankruptcy story broke. “I knew right then I’d lost everything,” he said.
Ramsey showed up when his government called him into the Army in 1974. Now he wonders where his government was while Enron executives were cashing out and leaving workers holding worthless stock. “Weren’t there government agencies watching them? Look at that Andersen outfit. Look at all those analysts telling us the company would never go broke. Our government wouldn’t let these people rob us.” Ramsey doesn’t have much faith in the government’s will to prosecute Enron’s executives and board members. “If you or I walked into a store and stole something,” he said, “we’d be going to jail.” Ramsey assumes but has a hard time accepting that many of the plunderers at Enron are above the law. If he can’t have justice, he’d settle for equity. “They’re not going to lock them up. But they could at least freeze their accounts and monitor their travel.” The money, as Tim Ramsey sees it, belongs to the workers and shareholders it was stolen from.
“When this first happened, it didn’t hit,” he said. “Two to three months later, I started to get really pissed off.” Ramsey thought about filing for bankruptcy, but then he would lose his house. “If I
was in Florida like O.J., I’d be in better shape,” he said. “You can file bankruptcy and keep your house there.” Ramsey owes $100,000 on his home, and