The Enron Corp. scandal is dominating print and broadcast news, and every day, developments in the matter are announced with ever more shocked voices, in ever more ominous tones.

But the Enron scandal, like most ongoing news, is a little bit like “Rex Morgan, M.D.” or “Judge Parker” or any of the serious comics nobody reads. Each day has new episodes, but unless you’ve been following from the beginning, you have no idea what’s going on.

For my own sake, I undertook the mission of finding out what Enron is, and what they’ve done. And, for your sake, I’m printing them here today.

Enron was a global retailer of energy. Energy, in the form of electricity, coal, oil and natural gas, actually varies in price depending on where you are.

Enron acted as a trader, working to buy energy where it was cheapest, and sell it where it was most valuable. This isn’t easy to understand, considering no energy was actually shipped anywhere. It’s actually much more confusing than that. The energy Enron traded was energy that hadn’t been produced yet.

Think of it this way: I have a friend, Bill, who owns an apple orchard. In February, I offer to buy 100 bushels of the apples Bill is going to grow that year. Bill is confident he’s going to have a good year and lots of apples, so he sells them to me for $1 per bushel.

In July, Michigan is swept by the dreaded Tibetan Apple Tree Fever, and projected apple production drops. Suddenly, Bill’s crop looks like it will be smaller and more valuable - about $3 a bushel. But Bill has already sold me some at $1 a bushel. I’ve bought nonexistent future apples in February for much less than I’d be able to buy them in July. Even though the apples won’t exist until November.

Wait. It gets better.

I go to my friend Lisa and tell her I’ll sell her my rights to the apples for $2 per bushel, a dollar less than she could get if she bought them from Bill. She goes for it, of course. Now it appears that I’ve made a profit of $1 per bushel. But let’s say that by the time that harvest comes, everyone is sick of all the apple talk and the price is now 50 cents a bushel.

I bought and sold 100 bushels of apples before they ever existed. Bill’s done well, since he sold me apples at $1 per bushel. I’ve done well, since I’ve ended up with $100 of profit. Lisa’s screwed, since she now has 100 bushels of apples she bought at four times their real price.

Replace apples with oil, Bill with the power industry, and Rishi with Enron, and you get the idea. By the way, Lisa is the energy-consuming public, but you knew that.

Since what’s being traded doesn’t exist when it is traded, Enron figured it didn’t have to exist as an object at all. That’s how it made its money.

With energy markets being rather unpredictable, Enron was able to become very successful in a short time. What was tricky was that Enron’s value was based not only on how much business it actually did, but how quickly it was growing. Ironically, the corporation’s stock was being bought and sold on the same principles as it traded energy.

It worked well. Created in 1985, by 1995 Enron was able to control almost a fifth of all of the natural gas sold on this continent. By 1997, the Enron board of directors decided if energy could be traded like apples, anything could be traded like energy - including lumber, insurance policies and even advertising time.

Here’s where it gets a little shady. As it grew and diversified, Enron built up huge debt. The company covered up this debt by taking advantage of the fact that leases aren’t considered debt. For instance, I signed a 12-month lease on my apartment for $500 a month. You and I know that I owe $6,000 for the year, but the bank and IRS don’t see it the same way.

Enron exploited this goofy loophole brilliantly. It created hundreds of companies that were nothing more than names, and every time Enron bought something - a power plant, for instance - it would turn around and sell it to one of these partnerships for exactly the price it paid.

Then that company would rent it back. All of the debt for the power plant was on the books at the ghost company, and Enron had the plant. Common sense? Nope. Economics? Absolutely.

This wouldn’t have mattered to anyone outside of Enron, except it was a public corporation. As such, it was legally bound to have an accountant report on its finances to the public. For Enron, that accounting firm was Arthur Andersen.

As the bad news about the finances was released, the price of Enron stock fell farther, which gave Enron less money to pay off its accounts, which worsened the debt. The spiral led to bankruptcy.

As things slid further, Enron stock dropped in value. Chief Executive Officer Kenneth Lay and the board of directors knew how bad the books actually were, and they were soon going to be public. When that happened, the stock would be worth nothing, so they forbade their employees, who owned stock as part of their salaries, from selling. Meanwhile, Lay and the board sold like crazy, made millions and left their employees to rot.

Politically, the picture is a little hazier. For Enron to operate, old energy laws had to be relaxed and new ones had to be written. To get these changes, the company paid millions for political influence. Lay seemed to have some influence in the membership of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, even going so far as to give the Bush administration a list of candidates. The commission had enormous influence over energy regulation.

Last week, the White House admitted that Enron board members had at least six meetings with Bush administration members, including Vice President Dick Cheney. What happened at these meetings remains unknown, since Cheney has refused to release meeting notes.

So the Enron scandal can be divided into three points: First, the company’s documentation of its business was extremely sketchy, defrauding investors. Second, when the end was coming, executives sacrificed the savings of their employees while running away with what they could. Finally, there is question over how much influence Enron had in Washington, especially in the White House.

It’s really not that confusing; it’s just a matter of the basics being presented in a coherent way. I hope I helped.

Rishi Kundi is a third-year medical student. He can be reached at kundiris@msu.edu.