ENRON

I'm still trying to figure out how ENRON managed to hide its dirty secrets for so long. It seems to me that someone would've figured it out earlier. What's even more shocking to me is how many other corporations, Arthur Andersen included, were willing to go along with ENRON for so long. This is really a scary situation to fathom. I really wonder how many other companies are engaging in similar practices. I sincerely hope none but I doubt my hopes are realistic. I am however glad that Skilling and the other executives were punished for their crimes. Our society puts so much emphasis on street crimes and often ignores the white collar crime taking place in large corporations. I think we need to rethink this mindset. White collar crime involves much larger amounts of money and many more people. We need to focus on eliminating loopholes for companies to exploit. Including deregulation. I can't understand why anyone would see the deregulation of commodities as a good idea. No one should have the ability to play God with the prices of things our society depends on. It is essential that the government have the ability to control the prices of things that we can't live without. I understand that we are a capitalist society and that we support the ideas of a free market but its impossible to have a truly free market when there are people like Jeffrey Skilling and Ken Lay willing to play God. There are too many greedy people in the world to trust in a truly free market. There will always be someone out there trying to exploit the freedom of a free market. Especially alarming were the rolling blackouts in California caused purposefully by ENRON. Hearing the traders laugh about the fires and the accidents was life altering. I can't believe there is such selfishness in the world. This really makes me wary of working for corporate America. I just don't know if I'm tough enough.