Sic Semper Avaritia

Finally! A Capitalist with honor and dignity. Greed displays a conscience, after all. Who woulda thunk it? Last week, J. Clifford Baxter, a former top executive for collapsed energy giant Enron Corp., recaptured his lost humanity and took his own life over misdeeds perpetrated by, for, and of his company. I'm impressed. As a strong dissenter of Enron's accounting practices, he would doubtless have landed on his feet following Federal investigations, so this was no "coward's way out". It was human remorse. Now whether this was as a result of the destruction of the company or the destruction of the lives of Enron employees and investors remains to be seen, but I prefer to believe the latter. His large cash gains from portfolio liquidation at top-dollar prices certainly smack of opportunism, insider information and greed, but conflict stops at the grave. However, this gives me an idea. Somehow, we convince Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey Skilling and about twenty-five other top Enron executives to follow Baxter's lead and fall upon their own diamond-studded swords. Following this, the hundreds of millions of dollars of their illgotten gains would be collected and redistributed to all the employees and investors who were robbed and ruined. And at each grave, on each headstone, at the very top, would be chiseled the word "OINK".                     Death is a high price to pay for greed, but such unto all swine.