Marketplace Special Report

Blind Trust, What Enron Says About America

By: David Brancaccio

Length: 51 mins

Publisher's summary

It is more than just the biggest corporate bankruptcy in U.S. history. The collapse of Enron is a tale of greed, hubris, corporate dishonesty, loss of security, and shaken trust in the American economic system. More importantly, Enron's collapse marks the end of one era, and the start of a new one.

The Marketplace Special Report: Blind Trust goes beyond the avalanche of Enron-related headlines. Marketplace host David Brancaccio leads a cast of analysts, reporters, commentators, opinion-leaders (including economist Paul Krugman and former SEC Chairman Arthur Leavitt) - even actors and cartoonists - toward a "final draft" version of the Enron story and the six important lessons to be learned:

1. The Enron story is bigger than a series of passing scandals: it's a watershed event.
2. Enron was caused by corporate, and even cultural, hubris.
3. Enron represents a costly betrayal of trust - one with the potential to damage the American economic system.
4. Enron reveals the precarious state of what Americans understand about economics.
5. Enron isn't the end of the 'new economy': in a bigger sense, it's just the start of it.
6. Enron is the great warning shot for a new economic era.

This special report isn't about "who-did-what-to-whom," nor "what-did-they-know-and-when-did-they-know-it." Instead, Blind Trust will step back from the noise to put the Enron drama in a greater historical context. (Original Broadcast Date: February 22, 2002)

(P) and ©2002 Minnesota Public Radio