#enron — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #enron, aggregated by home.social.
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“Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence”*…
Scheduling Note: as a consequence of long meetings scheduled to start very early, (Roughly) Daily will be off tomorrow/Monday and Wednesday. There should be a post on Tuesday, and regular service should resume on Thursday…
Corruption in the U.S. has a long and costly history, intertwining both government and corporations. Our current moment is feeling especially “dirty“– and disfunctional— at both levels.
Eric Ries was a founder of the Lean Start-Up movement and the founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange. His new book, Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad (highly recommended), tackles the issue head-on. Here, a short excerpt, explaining why…
Not all forms of making money are equal. Some create wealth; others destroy it. Over the centuries, when people have gone searching for the moral logic of capitalism, they always hit this same bedrock principle: Fully informed, uncoerced, voluntary transactions create surplus value because both parties end up better off.
Think about your last genuinely good purchase. You valued the product more than the price you paid, so you are better off. But the seller, too, is better off (otherwise they would not have sold). Both parties are wealthier. When this happens, it’s a bit of a magic trick. In an instant, new value exists that did not a moment before. This wealth was not stolen; it was generated.
But this only works when the exchange is truly voluntary and informed. Remove any of these conditions and the mechanism breaks.
This is why embezzlement, coercion, fraud, bribery, and deception are wrong. It’s not only because they are illegal or even immoral. It’s because they corrupt the fundamental premise of our entire economic system. They transform transactions meant to create value into ones that destroy it.
This trajectory is so common these days that we hardly know what to call it. The answer is simple. Since every version of it shares the same value-destroying logic, regardless of whether the violation is illegal or even immoral, we should use the same word to describe them all: corruption.
Our modern sense of “corruption” has become catastrophically narrow. What I’m talking about is something much broader than bribery or embezzlement. (After all, the Latin corrumpere means “to break completely.”) Corruption breaks the logic of capitalism itself.
Every Ponzi scheme, every hidden externality, every unit of extracted value is a drag on our whole economy’s potential. These corruptions don’t just harm their immediate victim; they erode trust, increase transaction costs, and destroy the civic infrastructure that makes efficient markets possible. The hidden economic costs are staggering. The truth is that capitalism succeeds not because of these widespread violations but despite them…
As the “father of capitalism” himself, Adam Smith, said: “Justice… is the main pillar that upholds the whole edifice. If it is removed, the great, the immense fabric of human society… must in a moment crumble into atoms.” (Theory of Moral Sentiments, Chapter III)
Diagnosing the disease that threatens us: “Corruption, Defined,” from @ericries.bsky.social.
* Thomas Jefferson
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As we grapple with graft, we might recall that on this date in 2002, three days after being found guilty of obstruction of justice for shredding the thousands of documents and deleting emails and company files that tied the firm to its audit of Enron, accounting firm Arthur Andersen was preparing its appeal.
Legal department member Nancy Temple and David Duncan, the lead partner for the Enron account, were cited in the legal action as the responsible managers in the scandal because they ordered subordinates to shred relevant documents. Duncan himself pleaded guilty in federal court in Houston to obstruction of justice on April 10, 2002, saying that he had ordered the destruction of documents and also personally destroyed documents.
The conviction was later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court (on the grounds that the jury had not been properly instructed on the charge against Andersen). The Supreme Court ruling theoretically left Andersen free to resume operations. However, the damage done to the Andersen name was so great (not just from the Enron scandal but also from others involving Andersen accounting malpractice, such as WorldCom a year after Enron) that it did not return as a viable business even on a limited scale in the years after the ruling.
Although only a small number of Arthur Andersen’s employees were involved with the scandal, the firm was effectively put out of business; the SEC is not allowed to accept audits from convicted felons. The company surrendered its CPA license and 85,000 employees lost their jobs.
#ArthurAndersen #buiness #capitalism #corruption #culture #Enron #graft #history #justice #politics #trust #Worldcom -
“Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence”*…
Scheduling Note: as a consequence of long meetings scheduled to start very early, (Roughly) Daily will be off tomorrow/Monday and Wednesday. There should be a post on Tuesday, and regular service should resume on Thursday…
Corruption in the U.S. has a long and costly history, intertwining both government and corporations. Our current moment is feeling especially “dirty“– and disfunctional— at both levels.
Eric Ries was a founder of the Lean Start-Up movement and the founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange. His new book, Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad (highly recommended), tackles the issue head-on. Here, a short excerpt, explaining why…
Not all forms of making money are equal. Some create wealth; others destroy it. Over the centuries, when people have gone searching for the moral logic of capitalism, they always hit this same bedrock principle: Fully informed, uncoerced, voluntary transactions create surplus value because both parties end up better off.
Think about your last genuinely good purchase. You valued the product more than the price you paid, so you are better off. But the seller, too, is better off (otherwise they would not have sold). Both parties are wealthier. When this happens, it’s a bit of a magic trick. In an instant, new value exists that did not a moment before. This wealth was not stolen; it was generated.
But this only works when the exchange is truly voluntary and informed. Remove any of these conditions and the mechanism breaks.
This is why embezzlement, coercion, fraud, bribery, and deception are wrong. It’s not only because they are illegal or even immoral. It’s because they corrupt the fundamental premise of our entire economic system. They transform transactions meant to create value into ones that destroy it.
This trajectory is so common these days that we hardly know what to call it. The answer is simple. Since every version of it shares the same value-destroying logic, regardless of whether the violation is illegal or even immoral, we should use the same word to describe them all: corruption.
Our modern sense of “corruption” has become catastrophically narrow. What I’m talking about is something much broader than bribery or embezzlement. (After all, the Latin corrumpere means “to break completely.”) Corruption breaks the logic of capitalism itself.
Every Ponzi scheme, every hidden externality, every unit of extracted value is a drag on our whole economy’s potential. These corruptions don’t just harm their immediate victim; they erode trust, increase transaction costs, and destroy the civic infrastructure that makes efficient markets possible. The hidden economic costs are staggering. The truth is that capitalism succeeds not because of these widespread violations but despite them…
As the “father of capitalism” himself, Adam Smith, said: “Justice… is the main pillar that upholds the whole edifice. If it is removed, the great, the immense fabric of human society… must in a moment crumble into atoms.” (Theory of Moral Sentiments, Chapter III)
Diagnosing the disease that threatens us: “Corruption, Defined,” from @ericries.bsky.social.
* Thomas Jefferson
###
As we grapple with graft, we might recall that on this date in 2002, three days after being found guilty of obstruction of justice for shredding the thousands of documents and deleting emails and company files that tied the firm to its audit of Enron, accounting firm Arthur Andersen was preparing its appeal.
Legal department member Nancy Temple and David Duncan, the lead partner for the Enron account, were cited in the legal action as the responsible managers in the scandal because they ordered subordinates to shred relevant documents. Duncan himself pleaded guilty in federal court in Houston to obstruction of justice on April 10, 2002, saying that he had ordered the destruction of documents and also personally destroyed documents.
The conviction was later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court (on the grounds that the jury had not been properly instructed on the charge against Andersen). The Supreme Court ruling theoretically left Andersen free to resume operations. However, the damage done to the Andersen name was so great (not just from the Enron scandal but also from others involving Andersen accounting malpractice, such as WorldCom a year after Enron) that it did not return as a viable business even on a limited scale in the years after the ruling.
Although only a small number of Arthur Andersen’s employees were involved with the scandal, the firm was effectively put out of business; the SEC is not allowed to accept audits from convicted felons. The company surrendered its CPA license and 85,000 employees lost their jobs.
#ArthurAndersen #buiness #capitalism #corruption #culture #Enron #graft #history #justice #politics #trust #Worldcom -
@seanpm2001 Muskrat is a straight up conman.
I don't believe the trillion $ actually exists as it is just stock unless he liquidates it. That stock could plunge at any time.
#Enron -
Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow – No trackers, no ads. Black type, white background. Privacy policy: we don't collect or retain any data at all ever period. [Unofficial] @[email protected] ·Pluralistic: Bubbles are REALLY evil (07 May 2026)
https://web.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/07/dump-the-pumpers/
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Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow – No trackers, no ads. Black type, white background. Privacy policy: we don't collect or retain any data at all ever period. [Unofficial] @[email protected] ·Pluralistic: Bubbles are REALLY evil (07 May 2026)
https://web.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/07/dump-the-pumpers/
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How long until the Epstein Files will be known as the Epstein Corpus?
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How long until the Epstein Files will be known as the Epstein Corpus?
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“It’s a strange thing goes on inside a bubble,” [note: #genAI is not ONLY a bubble; this isn’t a perfect analogy. But the extent to which it and the US government are mutually captured by a necessity of overvaluation may be very similar.] #enron #digitalGovernance #regulation #ethics #AIEthics
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Everyone who works for Google, Palantir, or Musk should read or watch this play about #Enron (from 2010) Skilling: A deregulated system means …The market. The free market is there to show regulators how wrong they're getting it. I'm setting you free in California, fellas, bring it on home.
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The SP500 is starting to look like NVIDIA -> companies NVIDIA is investing in -> everyone else. It's starting to get NVIDIA heavy. If they go down...SP500 is going to look terrible.
Enron 2.0
#nvidia #sp500 #enron #stockmarket #stocks #ai #economics #economy
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The SP500 is starting to look like NVIDIA -> companies NVIDIA is investing in -> everyone else. It's starting to get NVIDIA heavy. If they go down...SP500 is going to look terrible.
Enron 2.0
#nvidia #sp500 #enron #stockmarket #stocks #ai #economics #economy
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Shout out to the “Special Purpose Vehicle” made famous by Enron as a powerful tool for financial fraud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special-purpose_entity #SPV #SpecialPurposeVehicle #Enron #fraud
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Shout out to the “Special Purpose Vehicle” made famous by Enron as a powerful tool for financial fraud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special-purpose_entity #SPV #SpecialPurposeVehicle #Enron #fraud
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So sketchy…feels like what were seen as criminal and unethical practices back in the #Enron era are now SOP for many PE shops.
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So sketchy…feels like what were seen as criminal and unethical practices back in the #Enron era are now SOP for many PE shops.
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A long but good read. Interesting point about where TF did a claimed 6 million shipped GPUs actually go.
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TechSpot: Nvidia denies Enron-style accounting accusations amid AI bubble fears. “In a recently uncovered memo to Wall Street investors, Nvidia rejected multiple accusations that it is mismanaging stock, misrepresenting the long-term usefulness of its chips, and cooking its books in a way similar to disgraced energy company Enron. Although Nvidia’s defense appears sound, the allegations […]
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TechSpot: Nvidia denies Enron-style accounting accusations amid AI bubble fears. “In a recently uncovered memo to Wall Street investors, Nvidia rejected multiple accusations that it is mismanaging stock, misrepresenting the long-term usefulness of its chips, and cooking its books in a way similar to disgraced energy company Enron. Although Nvidia’s defense appears sound, the allegations […]
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L'Anticapitaliste📣 La vie d’une bulle - Tragédie en 3 actes: D’abord il y eut les ordinateurs. La productivité allait exploser ! Et puis Robert Solow, « Nobel d’économie », constata que les ordinateurs étaient partout… sauf dans les statistiques de… 📣NPA-A #économie #produktivité #Internet #Enron
La vie d’une bulle - Tragédie ... -
Nvidia is obviously not Enron: Enron was (supposedly) in the energy-producing business; Nvidia is clearly in the energy-guzzling business. Also they used a very different accounting scheme.
/s
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Nvidia is obviously not Enron: Enron was (supposedly) in the energy-producing business; Nvidia is clearly in the energy-guzzling business. Also they used a very different accounting scheme.
/s
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The last time I read an article like this it was entitled “Is Enron Overpriced?” in Fortune magazine.
“Vibe Earnings” are just the “Mark to market accounting” of the 2020’s.
https://substack.com/inbox/post/179453867
#ai #artificialintelligence #slop #circular #financing #enron #fraud
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The last time I read an article like this it was entitled “Is Enron Overpriced?” in Fortune magazine.
“Vibe Earnings” are just the “Mark to market accounting” of the 2020’s.
https://substack.com/inbox/post/179453867
#ai #artificialintelligence #slop #circular #financing #enron #fraud
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#Enron donations helped fund FL recount challenge, their inauguration!
Cheney's back-door dealings w/ his National Energy Policy Development Group (the "Energy Task Force") went all the way to #SCOTUS who of course protected them by punting.
Obviously #Cheney let them write US policy; one can't see the trees, for the conflicts of interest.
#war #criminal #DickCheney #shot a #man in the #face #IraqWar #weapons of #mass #destruction #waterboarding #profiteering #corruption https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/enron-what-dick-cheney-knew/ -
What kind of AI bubble are we in?
This is very helpful by Dave Karpf about three prevailing narratives concerning the dot-com crash which are lurking in the background of current debates:
So those are our three potential narratives: (1) a startup bubble, (2) unrealistic capital expenditures, and (3) way-too-fancy financial chicanery. All three of these phenomena happened simultaneously, but the lessons we take from the dotcom crash vary depending on which story we emphasize.
As he points out Sam Altman means (1) such that his company will be the equivalent of Amazon arising from the crash. Whereas I think the most incisive critique of the current bubble concerns the parallels between the financial infrastructure of AI (e.g. circular financing, a push to ‘financial innovation’, deliberately opaque treatment of business fundamentals) and financialisation from Enron through to the great recession. I’ve not as convinced that the infrastructural build out is as self-evidently irrational as Karpf suggests here:
For the past year, the AI data center construction boom has given off strong Global Crossing vibes. Microsoft, Meta, Google, OpenAI, and X.ai are all spending billions to build massive data centers. I’m just a simple political scientist who reads old tech magazines, but I cannot fathom how the costs of data center construction are ever supposed to be recouped from a mass user base that pays between $0 and $20/month for the products. (Read Ed Zitron for much more on how little sense these numbers make).
Effectively they’re deploying their savings glut on a bet about who controls the future of planetary scale computation. The calculation is that this will be used for something and it’s a long term capital investment as much as a short-term bet on generative AI. I agree with him that it’s like the telecoms story with the exception that I don’t think this will bankrupt any of the major cloud computing players. OpenAI and Anthropic on the other hand….? This on the other hand seems like a deeply precarious basis for sustained growth:
But with the latest wave of multibillion- and trillion-dollar dealmaking among the largest AI players, the vibes are turning decidedly Enron-like. Nvidia announced it is investing $100 billion in OpenAI, which OpenAI will then use to purchase Nvidia products. OpenAI announces a deal to buy $78 billion in chips from AMD, and is awarded 10% of the company in the deal, effectively offsetting the purchase.
As he puts it in the closing paragraph: “But I’ll say this: the AI bubble isn’t predominantly giving off Pets.com or Global Crossing vibes anymore. It’s giving Enron vibes” 👌
This is something which the FT journalist Rana Foroohar drew attention to years ago in Don’t Be Evil. This is how Readwise summarises my highlights and notes oon her book:
Her systemic-risk argument:
- Big Tech has become “too big to fail” by amassing giant, opaque bond portfolios and acting like unregulated banks (issuing cheap debt, buying higher-yield corporate bonds, anchoring deals). If those assets are downgraded or dumped, markets could be toppled.
- Their dominance across critical “infrastructure” (ads, cloud, payments/logistics, data) makes them systemically important beyond finance, with failures or abuses spilling into politics, media, healthcare, and national security.
- The tech–finance convergence (using privileged data to price and push credit/insurance) amplifies information asymmetries and offloads tail risks to the public, with the state likely as insurer of last resort.
So it’s not just big balance sheets; it’s balance sheets + market centrality + regulatory gaps that create new systemic risk.
#accounting #anthropic #capitalism #daveKarpf #dotComCrash #Enron #finance #openAI #politicalEconomy #risk
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Imagine the kind of tricks #Nvidia would have to pull to meet the growth targets jusifying its market valuation. Because to even make it in 2025, they've already had to do circular financing to fund AI customers who lack capital. We're reaching #Enron level already.
From Ed Zitron newsletter, The AI Bubble's Impossible Promises: https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-ai-bubbles-impossible-promises/
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Imagine the kind of tricks #Nvidia would have to pull to meet the growth targets jusifying its market valuation. Because to even make it in 2025, they've already had to do circular financing to fund AI customers who lack capital. We're reaching #Enron level already.
From Ed Zitron newsletter, The AI Bubble's Impossible Promises: https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-ai-bubbles-impossible-promises/
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"If you’re thinking all of this looks a lot like Musk trying to juice his #Tesla sales numbers—and therefore his Tesla stock share price—by playing a shell game with his own companies, you’re not alone. It isn’t quite the same as the disastrous special purpose entities that ultimately brought energy company #Enron down, but it’s not far off either."
https://www.dailykos.com/story/2025/10/15/2348607/-Cybertruck-sales-are-so-bad-Musk-is-selling-them-to-himself -
$7 billion for AGI makes Enron and Lehman Brothers look like responsible enterprises.
https://www.korte.co/ispj
#AGI #AI #enron #business -
$7 billion for AGI makes Enron and Lehman Brothers look like responsible enterprises.
https://www.korte.co/ispj
#AGI #AI #enron #business -
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