The Unheeded Lessons From Enron, 15 Years Later

The collapse of Enron in 2001, then the largest-ever U.S. bankruptcy, was a front-page financial scandal that landed its top bosses in prison, destroyed accounting giant Arthur Andersen, and was the subject of a film. Despite Congressional hearings and the passage of new laws, however, most of the real reasons behind Enron’s fall are unchanged. This talk will address how bipartisan blind faith in “the market” led to Enron’s fall, fueled the 2008 Great Recession, and continues to cause problems.

Loren Fox is a journalist, author and research analyst. His book, Enron: The Rise and Fall (John Wiley, 2002), was one of the first comprehensive accounts of the Enron saga. He worked as a writer and editor at Business 2.0magazine and other publications, and his writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times and elsewhere. Since 2012, Loren has been director of research at Money-Media, a division of the Financial Times; he has been quoted in The New York Times, the Associated Press and other media, and he’s a frequent speaker at investment industry conferences.