I wrote: "Enron employees did not have this liberty to the degree afforded most employees at most companies"
You wrote: "They absolutely did have every right that every other American has."
Again I will state that, unlike the rest of us, at the very moment when we found out that there was trouble in Enron and were able to pull our investments out, the Enron employees were *locked* because Lay et al. had elected to change Enron's 401k plan administrator.
Therefore they did *not* have the same freedom as the rest of us to act upon market conditions. They did have latitude prior to the news, but since we and they were both being lied to about the situation, they had no idea there was any reason to bail out. If this is "their fault" then IMO that's no different from blaming a mugging victim.
Anyway the rest of your post I agree on. I shed no tears for Lay's death but he's not a mass-murdering terrorist!
Every American invested in a 401k is subject to changes in plan administration and other lockup scenarios as well.
When I point out that they could choose to diversify their investments, people say: "They couldn't diversify - they weren't allowed to sell their shares." But they were allowed to sell their shares.
Then the claim becomes: "Well they couldn't sell their shares for a 60 day administrative change window" - as if this doesn't routinely happen to every 401k investor at some point or other.
My entire argument is based on the fact that these people did nothing for years and years, in some cases decades.
What's the problem: that some guy went for 20 years studiously neglecting his personal finances and all of a sudden has a right to complain because he's locked up while his plan changes administrators?
And that doesn't account for the millions of shares of Enron stock that were held by Enron employees outside of the 401k plans, which were saleable at any time.
at the very moment when we found out that there was trouble in Enron and were able to pull our investments out
The 401k was halted for administrative change sometime on or around October 17, 2001 when the shares were trading about $32.
In the 6 months preceding that date, Enron stock had lost more than half its value. It was even trading as high as $81 in February 2001 - that's right 250% higher earlier that year.
If you were willing to watch two-thirds of your 401k evaporate without doing a darned thing about it, how much did the 60 day lockup actually affect you?
Two-thirds of the savings were gone by lockup time - anyone who was thinking was long gone before the administration change.