ABSTRACT
Enron's top managers—especially chief Ken Lay—used its fleet of corporate jets as a personal limo service, transporting family members around the world, from the playgrounds of southern France to car races in Canada and vacations in Mexican resorts. The Sardinia bash was unforgettable all right—as a symbol of the era of excess that the birthday girl's husband came to exemplify, much like Michael Milken's Predators' Balls and the gilded "cottages" of the robber barons in Newport, Rhode Island came to symbolize those eras. Just as in previous scandal-ridden eras, the crooks, liars, and envelope-pushers of the late 1990s operated along a spectrum of sleaze. If there is a spectrum of sleaze within which US managers may operate, the top of the spectrum is occupied by those who fed at the corporate trough, turning their companies into virtual piggy banks for the personal use of senior managers and their kin.
