Success Quote by Kenneth Lay

Kenneth Lay’s line is corporate jujitsu: a calm-sounding sentence engineered to make a policy choice feel like weather. By insisting rates would rise “whether you deregulate or not,” he tries to evacuate agency from the room. If outcomes are inevitable, then deregulation can’t be blamed, and the public’s anger has nowhere to land. It’s a classic executive move: turn a contested decision into an unstoppable market law.

The second clause is the real tell. Lay points at rising electricity prices “still within the regulated framework” as if regulation itself is the culprit. The subtext is an invitation: you’re already paying more, so why cling to an old system? It’s argument by preemptive absolution, built to disarm skeptics who fear deregulation will spike bills. He’s also smuggling in a narrower definition of responsibility: if the system is “regulated,” then any pain must be regulation’s fault, not the emerging market structure, not strategic manipulation, not the incentives being set up behind the scenes.

Context does the heavy lifting. Lay was Enron’s CEO during the push for energy-market deregulation, especially in California, where “market reforms” were sold as efficiency and consumer benefit. The quote reads differently knowing how price volatility, scarcity narratives, and trading games later collided with public life. Its intent isn’t to inform; it’s to normalize risk and launder uncertainty into credibility. Lay speaks like a referee while holding a stake in the scoreboard.