Word: enronizing
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...message is not one of strict self-promotion. In her speeches, she champions the rights of the individual investor and calls for a reformed corporate-governance structure. She hopes her book will "cleanse the resumes of the good people at Enron." And the fact is, she has to make a living. She has always paid most of the bills, and in September, Rick quit his job to spend more time with the family. Now she brings home the only paycheck. And financial worries have led the couple to postpone their plans for having a second child. "Personally," she sighs, "that...
...deflated as she can sometimes sound, Watkins does not for a moment regret her actions. A few weeks ago, when she was unpacking the boxes she had taken from her Enron office, she happened upon a green sticky-note pad that the firm once handed out to employees. It contains a quote from Martin Luther King Jr.: "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." She smacked her palm against her forehead. "You look at it and you think, 'Oh, my God, look how many people at Enron stayed silent," she says, "That...
Take in a ball game at the stadium that bore Enron's name, and you'll be sitting in a place now called Minute Maid Park. The tilted E that blazed in front of Enron's Houston headquarters is gone, sold at auction. At its offices, a pared-down staff administers old contracts and remaining assets like gas pipelines and power plants. It's nothing like the days when secretaries received gifts of Waterford crystal and executives jetted to luxury resorts to party. Enron's Christmas bash this year: an afternoon gathering in the lobby with coffee, cookies and music...
...Although Enron may be finished as a company, the fallout from its collapse is rolling on. The firm says it's facing 22,000 claims totaling $400 billion; everyone from investors to ex-employees wants a piece, including folks who worked at its Old Economy power companies and lost their life savings. Enron's profiteering from California's power crunch (along with that of other energy traders) saddled Golden State residents with an $11.3 billion bill. Legal experts say it may take five years to prosecute the wrongdoers. The debacle's winners? All those lawyers probing and pecking at Enron...
Given that legacy, it's worth recalling how revered Enron once was. The firm tried to put into practice the idea that nearly anything can be turned into a financial product and, through complex statistical modeling, traded for profit. Asset-light and heavily reliant on intellectual capital, Enron rewarded innovation and punished employees deemed weak. Those ideas were New Economy chic, and to some extent retain currency. Energy traders still use financial instruments that Enron pioneered in order to hedge against price swings. As for those notorious off-balance-sheet partnerships, "they can be used legitimately for financing projects...