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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.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-09-22/private-equity-firms-fundraising-stumbles-after-high-flying-era
https://acquirersmultiple.com/2021/09/the-mark-to-market-fallacy-in-private-equity/
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/23/sam-altman-openais-850-billion-in-planned-buildouts-bubble-concern.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2005/11/05/prosecutors-link-enron-fall-to-1987-scandal/1cc9a9d0-0a88-43f9-8d11-16972f2e9a87/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-09-25/openai-searches-for-ways-to-finance-trillion-dollar-ai-plan
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-09-22/private-equity-firms-fundraising-stumbles-after-high-flying-era
http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/belco-oil-gas-corp-history/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-10/coreweave-crwv-insiders-sold-1-billion-of-stock-in-q3-as-ai-rich-cash-out
https://archive.org/details/conspiracyoffool00kurt/mode/2up
https://archive.today/20230809203009/https://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/31/business/corporate-conduct-close-links-merrill-banker-had-many-direct-ties-to-enron.html
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.
Chat are we cooked?
18:24
They had touchscreens at this time?
To answer the question: No, but that’s the entire problem
Per Atrioic
Nowadays, all you have to do to easily scam people into giving you billions of dollars is to cultivate a mass personality cult and become president and by that point millions of people will literally be standing in line to buy up whatever bullshit you've come up with to peddle to them that month.
I hadn't learned the full breadth of what Enron was doing financially until this video and hearing "So they gave their partners shares of the company instead" was like watching Kenshiro tell his enemy "you are already dead" before they explode. Don't give people who are helping you do fraud reason to come after you when it crumbles.
so this video is just another history of Enron and doesn't answer the question in the title.
Glizzy
@Big A
In today’s world you just spend a few million lobbying and all of your troubles go away. If you side with the elephants, you’re doing god’s work and the mindless sycophants will buy it. If you side with the donkeys, you’re doing the work of the “common man” and the mindless sycophants will buy it. Easy as pie.