That's the Question that's been asked since the jurors brought down the guilty verdict for Lay and Skilling.
From one perspective, everything has changed because the bad guys have been punished.
The message for executives is that they can't claim ignorance of chicanery anymore, Alan R. Bromberg, a securities law professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, told Newsday.
Regulators, brokers and others have told MarketWatch that the verdict puts executives on notice, ushering in a new era of accountability and having a last effect on business.
Enron is a lesson in arrogance, recklessness and hubris, writes Kurt Eichenwald in the New York Times.
But have we really come that far? Remember, the Enron verdict came just days after Fannie Mae was fined $400 million for accounting tricks aimed at triggering bonuses for management. Like Enron, Fannie is a chilling story of cold-blooded corporate pathology where shareholders were fleeced by greedy executives.
"Some are calling yesterday's Enron verdicts the end of the corporate scandal era, but there's at least one big case still pending: Fannie Mae,'' says The Wall Street Journal. "The mortgage giant's regulator issued its long-awaited, 340-page report on the company's $10.8 billion accounting woes this week, and the news is that the internal rot is even worse than we ever imagined. This is the Beltway's Enron, yet the political class still hasn't fixed the core problem, which is Fannie's political protection."
To read the WSJ piece, click here
And Fannie Mae is just one of the many signs telling us that the bugs in the system remain, warns Daniel Gross in Slate.
Fannie Mae, Refco and the backdating of options are some of the skeletons that Gross rattles. He then reminds us that "Michael Kinsley's law applies as much on Wall Street as it does in Washington: 'The scandal isn't what's illegal; the scandal is what's legal'."
Indeed, as the Knowledge@Wharton series reminds us, the Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) that Lay and Skilling used to hide Enron's debts are legal, innovative and widely used. And will remain so.
Let's not kid ourselves. A few years of Sarbanes-Oxley will not protect us from another Enron.
You raise a lot of very good issues in this post and have great links. When Penn Square Bank fell, it was the beginning of the dominoes falling… Seattle Seafirst, then savings and loans…
You are right to look ahead at what will be next to tip over.
SOX is putting a lot of difficulties in front of a lot of corporations… it will be interesting to see how things begin to shake out. For those with integrity, it will be good. For those who have been irresponsible…
Cheers.