January 23  2003

The S.E.C. Poster Boy

Where Was God at Enron?
From the belly of the corporate beast, an exile lands on the shores of divinity school

by Carole Bass - January 23, 2003 Hartford Advocate


Jim Alexander knew that Enron was headed for a "rat hole" in 1995. "Maybe if I had been more of a trooper, then maybe people wouldn't have lost a lot of money."

The Bible is full of reluctant prophets. Not Chicken Little-style fortune-tellers but truth-tellers, mouthpieces for the Almighty, drafted to confront corrupt leaders and feckless followers. Their message: Straighten up fast or meet certain doom.
Jim Alexander doesn't cast himself as a prophet. Reluctant, yes. He'd rather not, he says, be talking about Enron -- how he quit in 1995, months after warning CEO Ken Lay that the company was headed for a "rat hole." He'd rather not be giving a New Haven lecture series called "Where was God in Enron?" He'd rather curl up in an armchair in his $660,000 East Rock home, learning ancient Hebrew and Greek and poring over the Bible as a Yale Divinity School student.

But Alexander does cast himself as a truth-teller. In his long years in business -- including his stint at Enron -- he was always honest, he says. He always did right, if not always "perfectionistically right."

And he did agree to talk to reporters about Enron, and to give the lectures at the First Presbyterian Church of New Haven on Whitney Avenue. The series started Jan. 19 and continues on the next three Sunday evenings at 7:30 p.m.

Read the entire article from the Hartford Advocate

Heat's on Martha again (New York Daily News)
Federal securities regulators have told Martha Stewart they've decided to file civil insider-trading charges against her in the coming weeks, two sources said yesterday.
- Jan 18 7:19 AM ET