Would ENRON Even Be That Bad by Today's Standards?

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Sources

McLean, B. & Elkind, P., 2003. The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron. New York: Portfolio.

Cruver, B., 2002. Anatomy of Greed: The Unshredded Truth from an Enron Insider. New York: Avalon.

Bryce, R., 2002. Pipe Dreams: Greed, Ego, and the Death of Enron. New York: PublicAffairs.

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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-09-22/private-equity-firms-fundraising-stumbles-after-high-flying-era

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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-10/coreweave-crwv-insiders-sold-1-billion-of-stock-in-q3-as-ai-rich-cash-out

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https://qz.com/1776080/how-the-mcdonnell-douglas-boeing-merger-led-to-the-737-max-crisis

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even been considered that bad by today’s standards?
The headline story that you are probably familiar with is that; the business started out as a moderately successful energy company, but when compounding profits became harder and harder to come by, they resorted to progressively more desperate fraudulent activities to keep the party going as long as they could.
They had convinced the world that they were the smartest men in the room,
made impressive (but willfully reckless) projections about their future performance,
created complex deal networks that made revenue look far better than it actually was, the reality is that, today ENRON is synonymous with corporate greed and corruption, and more than two decades on, it has radically reshaped the way that business is conducted… BUT…
In the years since, there have been plenty of larger and more brazen examples of outright fraud, many of which went largely unpunished and unremembered.

From: How History Works

Date: October 29, 2025

46 thoughts on “Would ENRON Even Be That Bad by Today’s Standards?”

Guess at the beginning: They took money from people wealthy enough for them to actually see consequences

Crypto has something like this almost every few months. The FTX and binance thing were not that long ago. Yet, no one cares.

They broke accountancy rules so yes they would be taken down today. Companies like Tesla aren't lying about making a profit they literally tell their investors they made a loss every year.

just a side note: it's mcdonnell douglas, not mcdonald douglas. they're not selling burgers, mate

Hi HHW,

I’ve followed How History Works for a while and really value the way you handle complex stories — thorough, factual, detailed, long, calm, and grounded. I wanted to suggest a topic that hasn’t had a full, long-form deep dive on YouTube yet: the Isabel Kukanova dos Santos case in Angola.

She’s the daughter of Angola’s former president, once called Africa’s richest woman (by Forbes), and later became the center of massive corruption and asset-recovery investigations stretching across Angola, Portugal, the UK, the U.S., and several offshore networks. It’s a story that has everything — political power, international finance, and how a global system hides wealth.

It deserves a full two-hour investigation like your other deep pieces: what really happened between 2020 and 2024, how the Luanda Leaks exposed her network, and how the legal systems across different countries tried to pull it apart.

Even if you’re not planning it right away, I think it fits the HHW style perfectly — a case that shows how power, privilege, and money move quietly across borders until someone finally pulls the thread.

Thanks for considering it, and for the care you put into your work.

haven’t watched it yet but lemme say this: the ai bubble doing what it’s doing rn and the fact nobody fucking cares..? i dunno..!

What makes Enron different from today’s scams is nobody was the wiser AND many employees dumped their entire 401ks into Enron stock. Nobody with half a brain is putting their entire 401k into NVDA or hoping OpenAI IPOs so they can do that with that stock. Once you understand thousands lost their ability to ever retire then you’ll understand why Enron was very different than what we have going on now. This behavior was encouraged by Enron management even as they sold off their positions in the company.