end-run

Watched the Enron movie last night with the GE. Especially at the beginning of it, I kept hearkening back to my days at a large internet retailer. The corporate culture was much the same, with risky behavior rewarded, the cult of personality surrounding the big boss man, the questionable financing practices, and so on. Our stock also rose more and faster than anyone expected, although it fell again with the general dot com bust. It is also still doing business, so I can only surmise that its financing was not nearly as creative as Enron's.

I wonder if business students are taught ethics. It seems to the rest of the world that of course they must be, but are they taught it with a wink? How else do you explain the heartless way that Enron traders helped create and then manipulate the California energy crisis? It's hard to understand, especially for one in a profession that takes ethics so seriously and discusses ethical issues regularly.