In a Philadelphia Inquirer column yesterday, Andrew Cassel said it beautifully:
The real shame of Enron isn’t that its top executives got filthy rich off of crooked deals and phony accounting. It’s that the company took a good idea and poisoned it.
The good idea is competition, specifically competition in the production and delivery of electricity. It’s an idea that has already brought significant benefits and will bring many more if it grows and evolves.
Read the column, and don’t blame Enron on deregulation or markets or anything other than the greed and lack of integrity of a few venal characters.