A small, sad truth that I ran across recently: “Fortune named Enron “America’s Most Innovative Company” for six consecutive years.”
That’s the one-and-only Enron, the now-bankrupt energy company whose name lives on as a reminder of lies, misconduct, and accounting fraud.
All those billions lost, those thousands left unemployed, those many more swindled. Reproach not, America, as Fortune magazine was sure Enron was a great company.
In each one of those six years during which Fortune praised Enron (while the corporation was lying), the few critics of that business seemed unpersuasive or irrational.
Enron’s problem, of course, was that time didn’t stop despite six years’ worth of praise; there were subsequent years, in which executives could no longer conceal bad ideas and bad acts.
Critics didn’t become right about Enron in later years – they were always right. It simply took time for others to see Enron’s ongoing lies and fraud.
Frauds of Enron’s sort are impossible to conceal perpetually.
They collapse on themselves, after which dogged investigators are in the best position expose the particulars of the swindle.