Leadership Quote by Jay Inslee

Inslee’s line is doing courtroom work in the language of a press conference: it names a villain, establishes a timeline, and frames the damage as both undeniable and engineered. “Because the sad fact is” signals a rhetorical move politicians love when they need to sound reluctant while assigning blame. He’s not offering a theory; he’s claiming a settled record, borrowing the authority of investigations and headlines that already made Enron a cultural shorthand for corporate fraud.

The phrase “manipulated with unfortunately great effect” is the tightest pivot. “Unfortunately” feigns sorrow, but “great effect” is the sharper blade: it concedes competence to the perpetrators, implying the market didn’t merely fail, it was outplayed. That wording nudges the listener away from abstract “market volatility” and toward intent, strategy, and culpability. Inslee isn’t just condemning Enron; he’s arguing that the system’s architecture allowed a few actors to weaponize it.

Context matters: “the West Coast starting in 2000” locates this in the California energy crisis era, when rolling blackouts and price spikes collided with deregulation politics. By broadening it to “Enron Corporation and others,” he avoids the too-easy scapegoat, hinting at a wider ecosystem of profiteers and enablers. The subtext is a policy brief in a sentence: if manipulation can have “great effect,” then regulation, oversight, and market design aren’t optional technocratic details; they’re moral necessities.