In just 15 years, Enron grew from nowhere to be America's seventh largest company, employing 21,000 staff in more than 40 countries. But the firm's success turned out to have involved an elaborate scam. Enron had lied about profits and stands accused of a range of shady dealings, including concealing debts so they didn't show up in the company's accounts. A chorus of outraged investors, employees, pension holders and politicians are demanding to know why Enron's failings were not spotted earlier.
             Enron is a new-economy company, which was a market maker for energy trading. It ranked as the most innovative company in America four years in a row, as judged by envious corporate peers in the annual Fortune magazine poll.
             When Enron got started, natural gas and electricity were produced, transmitted and sold by state-regulated monopolies. They were often inefficient. Enron used Wall Street magic to transform energy supplies into financial instruments that could be traded online like stocks and bonds. These contracts guaranteed customers a steady supply at a predictable price. By bringing the laws of supply and demand into the energy system it provided a new way of doing business for energy customers.
             Problems started when Enron figured if it could trade energy, it could trade anything, anywhere, in the new virtual marketplace. Newsprint. Television advertising time. Insurance risk. High-speed data transmission. All of these were converted into contracts - called derivatives - that were sold to investors. Enron poured billions into these trading ventures, and some failed. The Times's Kurt Eichenwald uncovered some of Enrons failures and how they created hiding places for it.
             To keep its mystique alive and its stock price growing, it set up partnerships where it could bury its losses, or generate imaginary revenues. Here's one of the more audacious examples, pieced together by The Wall Street Journal: Enron invested a bunch of money in a...