Enron, before the fall

Love that story. I remember a call-in radio show where the host was talking about buying out-of-favor stocks, and it was when Enron first faultered. One caller called in and said he was loading up the boat with Enron because all the issues surrounding it were going to go away.

Yowch.

I remember when they got into bandwidth trading. It sounded intriguing, and still does. But Enron jumped in without checking how deep the pool was. They were expecting broadband fiber to be treated like decades-old copper, or (more to their core business) like pipeline capacity. The folks who just made the big investments in fiber didn't share their vision. Year from now we might look back and say that it was an idea that was ahead of its time, but that doesn't relieve Enron from responsibility for not being more prudent.

Of course the failure of the bandwidth market to materialize was just one of many mistakes that were made.