Enron because of the company's high risk and largely unregulated trading operations. It had to maintain good credit to keep the trust of the thousands of companies with which it traded. If Enron lost its good credit rating, customers would be skeptical about its ability to make good on its hundreds of millions of dollars worth of trading liabilities. Sellers would require collateral or would refuse to sell to Enron if there was some doubt about collecting. I believe that in trying to maintain this type of high credit rating Enron used procedures that were either illegal or fall into a "gray" area.
Whenever many things go wrong it is not the act of one or two people, there were failures in other senior employees at Enron. What is sad and hard for me to understand is how rich does one have to be? The major players were already millionaires; they just wanted more money and power. Unfortunately, greed and arrogance was their downfall.
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