If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention:

ITEM: The pain and suffering caused by the lies and criminal behavior of the Enron Corp. has, at its root, when all other explanations are exhausted - deregulation - the elevation by Republicans and Democrats alike of the free market as the only legitimate arbiter of national economic policy.

Thus we have deregulated the airlines, the banks, insurance companies, radio, television and cable ownership, and finally the public utilities - electricity, natural gas, and telecommunications services. We have even deregulated the public school systems on the altar of the marketplace.

Thanks, free market for driving up rates and fees in all those areas, or for leaving us without any service at all.

The Enron Goliath did not generate any energy itself, but simply bought and sold through secret arrangements energy produced by others and in the process built a deregulated house of cards out of overvalued, but ultimately worthless, balance sheets and stock certificates. When it collapsed so did the life savings of thousands of workers and the financial well-being of communities and institutions that bought into the Enron myth.

Where were the federal regulators? On furlough from their posts, courtesy of the government, which decided to let Wall Street take over national energy policy.

We have our own little dirty and potentially risky deregulation story closer to home. The Massachusetts Electric Co., if you haven’t noticed, is part of an entity called National Grid, which, it turns out is a global corporation based in London, England.

With its purchase within the last two years of the New England Electric Systems, which included Massachusetts Electric, the Eastern Utilities Associates, plus its purchase of Niagara Mohawk in New York a little more than a year ago, National Grid is the ninth largest electric utility in the country. It also has half-a-million natural gas customers.

But, as a company it does not produce a single kilowatt of power. Under deregulation, according to a report in the New York Times, National Grid has sold all its power plants and now buys electricity from various other producers.

And, what about the experience of Bay State Gas. Co., the local provider of natural gas to homes and businesses in Hampshire County and the other key public utility for our communities. But, wait, Bay State Gas is hardly local and, in fact, since 1999 our gas supplier is actually called NiSource, the creation of years and years of consolidations and mergers that, . according to company publicity, actually traces its roots back to 1853 when the Fort Wayne (Ind.) Gas Light Co. was organized.

NiSource, a holding company - a more appropriately nefarious description would be evil cartel - with headquarters in Merrillville, Ind., has hardly improved the lives of its recently acquired customers in the Northeast, many of whom are probably still making payments for gas they used last winter when energy costs were whipsawed and then exploited by the deregulated companies until they impoverished families.

How is utility deregulation, which took hold in Massachusetts in 1998, working? Depends on who it was intended to benefit. The utilities are doing just fine, but there is little evidence of any competition - which was a goal - nor a ceiling on electricity or gas costs to consumers. Last summer, of course, when it got hot, as happens in the summer, customers were told not to use so much power, hardly a sophisticated response by a multi-billion dollar global corporation. Thanks National Grid for your concern, but why don’t our monthly payments provide for investment in plant and capacity so that when it gets hot we can use our fans and air conditioning without fear of brownouts?

In the bad old decades-long period of state and federal regulation, the utilities, after public testimony and examination of balance sheets and capital spending plans for power generation and distribution, were given periodic rate increases that guaranteed the companies a fixed return on their investment in exchange for expenditures by the companies for capacity that could assure uninterrupted, affordable power for the consumer. For several generations of Americans, electric power was regarded as an essential public resource, not to be subject to the whims of fast-buck entrepreneurs and greedy investors.

Utility regulation, which might possibly have been good for the customer was determined to be bad for the corporations, because they were left behind by the booming stock market. So the rules were changed; the marketplace - otherwise known as deregulation - replaced regulation. What is best for the company, its executives and stockholders might was supposed to be good for the customer, but. surprise, surprise, it wasn’t. We recall the experience of the citizens of California who a year ago could not keep up with the explosion in the cost of electricity and also had to cope with brownouts and shutdowns in what in peacetime once was regarded as an essential public service.

When all the Congressional hearings, corporate finger-pointing, auditors’ excuses, political payoffs, and employee lawsuits have been forgotten, the utilities, like much of our national economic activity, will remain unregulated because hardly anyone is talking about its role in the economic mess that has engulfed us, brainwashed as we are about the virtues of the free market.

As long as the marketplace remains the national God, we are doomed to repetitions of the unfolding scandal of Enron. We had our pockets picked by the Savings and Loan robbers, another deregulated catastrophe, which locally produced the white-collar heist of the Heritage Bank. Who paid for that unregulated disaster - employees and taxpayers. Yet, we learned nothing from the experience.

How many more scandals are required before it finally dawns on us that it is terrible public policy to let the fox into the chicken coop? We can only imagine the scale of financial scandal - a few years hence - that inevitably emerges from the charter school movement.

It’s deregulation, stupid.