ABSTRACT
At the height of its glory, the now-legendary Enron Corporation billed itself as the “world’s leading energy company.” Enron owned pipelines and electrical generation facilities and even branched out into water production facilities around the world. Enron’s “mark-to-market” accounting for its trading programs and inventory made its balance sheet volatile and earnings uncertain as market conditions worsened and the value of those assets declined. The accounting scandal at Enron touched off a media and political storm that President George W. Bush responded to with a speech on Wall Street promising tough action. Enron’s auditor, Arthur Andersen, was widely attacked in the press for not discovering Enron’s accounting manipulations. The Enron Task Force next turned its attention to what became known as the Nigerian barge case.
