One fascinating thing about Enron is that they found a way to corrupt their own standards. They were huge fans of marking assets to market—which could have averted both savings and loan crises, kept Executive Life from collapsing, averted the Japanese banking crisis, etc. On top of that, they loved incentive-based compensation.
This all fell apart when some Enron traders became the market: if you get paid based on prices, and you set prices, the rest of the Enron story is inevitable.
One fascinating thing about Enron is that they found a way to corrupt their own standards. They were huge fans of marking assets to market—which could have averted both savings and loan crises, kept Executive Life from collapsing, averted the Japanese banking crisis, etc. On top of that, they loved incentive-based compensation.
This all fell apart when some Enron traders became the market: if you get paid based on prices, and you set prices, the rest of the Enron story is inevitable.