Enron
...ating cash and new business at every turn. Originally a gas pipeline company, it metamorphosed into the world's largest trader in gas, electricity, water, and all sorts of post-modern commodities such as bandwidth. But when in October Enron was forced to disclose that, well, its bookkeeping had been too creative, its soaring profits were suddenly wiped out by losses and charges it had failed to record properly. Investors began to have second thoughts about Enron, whose stock, having reached a high of 98 dollars a share, plummeted. Suddenly Enron found itself in a huge credit crunch, and the corporation imploded. It turned out that many Enron executives had sold tens of millions of dollars of their stock while the public went on buying shares in the company, assured by these same executives that all was well. Worse, Enron executives had authorized a change in the company's pension plan that froze workers' retirement funds in Enron stock as the price nose-dived. While executives sold their stock, the workers woke up to find that their pension plan was worthless. Enron's accounting firm, Arthur Anderson Inc., had difficulty explaining how it gave a clean bill of health to a company that later revealed it had all sorts of hidden losses. In a stunning development, it was revealed that after the civil inves...