For those still following the Enron scandal (there don’t seem to be many these days), David Warsh has a good overview of the coverage of Enron by the business press. It’s clear that he doesn’t like the New York Times (I think he’s being unfair - I thought their post-9/11 coverage was excellent), but he finds some praiseworthy coverage there, in (no surprise) Floyd Norris and (surprise) Paul Krugman. Of the latter, he has revised his earlier hesitance:
I was among those who initially were skeptical of the diagnosis. But it seems to me now that Krugman turned out to be absolutely right. The industry’s conduct was the real story in California - “looting” behavior every bit as shocking (and, it turns out, as predictable) as that of many bankers in the run-up to the American savings and loan crisis of fifteen years before. The Enron saga is no more than a glorious point-making anecdote in this larger scheme of things. And Krugman played the key role in alerting the rest of the world to this possibility.
I think his comparison to the Savings and Loan bailout is apt, as that story, too, was never reported in a way that framed the issue well for the general public. Warsh takes the Times and other business journalism players to task for not following through on the story. And his look back is a good reminder that we should not drop our attempts to make sense of this scandal because new ones have come onto the scene.
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