Comment by weaksauce
21 hours ago
how long did enron last before they had to close because of fraud? it was over 20 years i'm pretty sure. that's not a good estimate.
21 hours ago
how long did enron last before they had to close because of fraud? it was over 20 years i'm pretty sure. that's not a good estimate.
Enron still did things in addition to their fraud.
They ran power plants and fiber optic networks. Those things continued to exist after they went bankrupt.
Were the direct cause of the 2000-2001 California blackouts bankrupting public utilities.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000%E2%80%932001_California...
According to SEC, Madoff started his Ponzi scheme in the early 90s and wasn't arrested until December 2008, about 15 years or so.
Enron started out as a real company doing real things, and only pivoted to fraud later.
Well, I wouldn't put it that way as long as we're correcting the record. It was always the boring moving dirt company, never pivoted, but it grew a cancer that became Too Big To Fail because it was more profitable than moving dirt.
- it did boring non-tech big industry stuff
- it was good at this
- it started an in-house hedging department (normal)
- they were good at their jobs and accidentally created a massive speculative trading business that fell apart
They caused statewide blackouts in California and bankrupted utilities by causing energy prices to be 20x normal rates.
You know, boring stuff like that.
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