Iggish Enronians in the news
Several co-winners of the 2002 Ig Nobel Economics Prize are in the news yet again. A March 22, 2006 New York Times article says:
A former Enron treasurer testified today that Kenneth L. Lay presided over meetings in which top executives discussed the energy company’s precarious finances and endorsed the continued use of complex accounting arrangements because they made it possible for Enron to meet Wall Street’s earnings expectations. Ben F. Glisan Jr., the former treasurer, provided some of the strongest testimony against Mr. Lay heard by the jury so far, as the prosecution entered the home stretch of its case against Mr. Lay, Enron’s former chairman, and Jeffrey K. Skilling, the company’s former chief executive….
Mssrs. Ley, Glisan and Skilling shared the prize with the executives, corporate directors, and auditors of their own and some twenty-odd other companies for adapting the mathematical concept of imaginary numbers for use in the business world.
(Click on the diagram to see an enlargement. Diagram courtesy of U.S. government.)