Tíu árum síðar

"Í desemberbyrjun 2001 er Enron lýst gjaldþrota. Fyrirtæki með yfir 20 þúsund starfsmenn, sem fáeinum mánuðum fyrr hafði tilkynnt um 50 milljarða dollara tekjur og hafði enn einu sinni sprengt allar væntingar. En nú var ballið búið. Þetta reyndist stærsta gjaldþrot í sögu Bandaríkjanna."

Já - í dag 2. desember 2011 eru nákvæmlega 10 ár síðan hið risastóra orku- og hrávörufyrirtæki Enron varð gjaldþrota. Í tilefni þess leyfir Orkubloggið sér nú að rifja upp eldri færslu sína um Enron.

Kannski er þó ennþá meiri ástæða til að hugleiða sumt af því sem segir í grein á fréttavef CBS í dag:

"Enron didn't go wrong because the late Ken Lay and currently imprisoned Jeff Skilling were bad guys... The failure of this corporation required the active participation and collusion of hundreds, if not thousands, of employees. Enron's corporate culture encouraged rampant, ruthless internal competition, driving otherwise decent human beings to take risks of a kind they knew were dangerous and wrong."

"Enron was the dress rehearsal for the banking crisis which propelled the economic crisis we now find ourselves mired in. We could have, should have learned from it. We didn't. Legislators were intimidated. Government was weak and probably corrupt. Employees in their hundreds colluded in what they knew to be wrong. This was willful blindness on an epic scale. And once the market bounced back, it was easy to fall back on the fatal argument that Enron had been the exception, not the rule."