How much the Enron's collapse has affected our collective psyche was evident in the turnout for this week's presentation by Fortune Magazine's senior editor Joe Nocera titled "The Enron Collapse and Why It Could Be Good For Us." Speaking to a capacity crowd in the college's chapel, Nocera related the story of how Fortune Magazine's Bethany McLean first saw through the Enron financials, wrote an article in March 2001 exposing the company's grave weaknesses and held firm with Enron executives when they met with her prior to the publication of Fortune's "Is Enron Overpriced?" Nocera is currently writing a book with McLean and Peter Elkind on the Enron debacle.
Nocera's presentation covered a wide range of topics related to Enron including the desperate need for research generated by analysts who are not conflicted by multiple business alliances, the absence of a level playing field for the small investor due to a lack of financial transparency and/or openness on the part of corporations, and the importance of going back to traditional methods of evaluating stock values. Following his presentation, Nocera fielded questions for a full hour. They ranged from the fairness of Michael Milken's sentence for insider trading to the wisdom of further government regulations of the markets to why the dot-com bubble burst.
In reflecting on the evening, Nocera said, "The attendance and the penetrating questions really show how deeply the Enron scandal has touched the entire culture. It's complicated stuff, and people really seemed to know what had transpired." The large crowd that remained at the end of Nocera's program affirmed the collective interest in the topic as well as the provocative and engaging nature of the presentation.
