Enron: the enemy of every entrepreneur and business person seeking prospects to invest in their ideas and ventures; the enemy of our nation’s economy; and therefore the enemy of everyone in the country.
You who are responsible for the sudden unemployment of a multitude of innocent and hardworking blue collars, for the unwarranted monetary losses those people have suffered and the painstaking struggles they will endure, and for the money lost by outside stockholders that you chose not to let in on the “little” secret have caused much more damage than that.
You, who deserve every ounce of judgement you receive for selling your souls in return for the heartless happiness of greed have not only betrayed all notions of your fiduciary duties, but you have also handicapped every person in the nation that has the ambition to seek investors in their businesses.
For the next time they have a proposal to present, the prospective investors will have the Enron nightmare in the back of their minds. A nightmare they will undoubtedly go to great lengths to avoid. Hence, persons that the prospects have no background on will begin with their arms tied behind their backs. Even persons with whom the investors had experience will have at least one arm tied while trying to win the prospects’ trust.
The standard has indeed been raised. That by itself is not necessarily a bad thing. For if it had been raised due to stiff competition, then capitalism is at work and working correctly. However, when people are trying to convince bankers and investors to help them finance business ideas, the prospective investor must believe in them in order for them to succeed. When a company like Enron comes along and stabs everyone in the back, everyone gets scared away. The next person looking for someone to trust them will be scrutinized that much more, and any little sign of weakness or uncertainty will cause the prospect to turn tail and run.
Thus, those who deserve to be given a chance to prove themselves or sustain a venture have been severely handicapped. The extra costs and pains post-Enron entrepreneurs and business executives will pay in order to further convince their prospective investors and to keep them on board have not been self-created. They are the direct result of Enron and other examples of how embarrassing it can be to show loyalty and faith in a company on shaky ground. The extra costs are economic externalities, a force at odds with capitalism.
The last thing we need in these times when our country is struggling to rise out of a recession worsened by the economic aftermath of 9/11, is externalities that result in lost faith in people with the potential vision and genius to help our economy flourish. But thanks to those responsible for the Enron debacle, we must all bear this pervasive setback and the effects of an economy that will take that much longer to recover. A. Jones
