Enron collapses

2001MajorContested

Houston energy trader Enron files for bankruptcy after revealing that off-balance-sheet partnerships hid billions in debt. Its fall takes down auditor Arthur Andersen and leads to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

Longest chain: The Big Bang → First stars ignite → Supernovae seed heavy elements → The Sun forms → Earth forms → First oceans → First life → Photosynthesis evolves → Great Oxidation Event → Complex cells (eukaryotes) → Multicellular life → First animals → Cambrian Explosion → First vertebrates → Jawed fish → Fish walk onto land → The amniotic egg → The Great Dying → Dinosaurs appear → Asteroid ends the dinosaurs → Early primates → Apes split from monkeys → Human line splits from chimpanzees → Walking upright → First stone tools → Genus Homo appears → Homo erectus → Control of fire → Habitual fire and cooking → Homo sapiens appears → Complex language → Natufian villages → Oldest known bread → Agriculture begins → Irrigation → Uruk and the first cities → Cylinder seals → Writing (cuneiform) → Babylonian mathematics → Babylonian astronomical diaries → Thales and natural philosophy → Trial and death of Socrates → Plato's Academy → Aristotle's Lyceum → Alexander's conquests → Death of Alexander and the Hellenistic kingdoms → Seleucid Empire founded → Parthian Empire founded → Sasanian Empire → Birth of Muhammad → Muhammad's first revelations → The Hijra → Conquest of Mecca → Death of Muhammad and the Rashidun caliphate → Arab conquests → Abbasid Caliphate → Battle of Talas → Paper reaches the Islamic world → House of Wisdom → Al-Khwarizmi and algebra → Fibonacci's Liber Abaci → Bills of exchange → Medici Bank → Double-entry bookkeeping → Muscovy Company → English East India Company → Seven Years' War → Stamp Act → Boston Tea Party → American Revolution → Declaration of Independence → Articles of Confederation ratified → Shays' Rebellion → U.S. Constitution → Louisiana Purchase → Austin's colony in Mexican Texas → Texas Revolution → United States annexes Texas → Mexican-American War → Compromise of 1850 → Kansas-Nebraska Act → Lincoln elected president → Fort Sumter → U.S. Civil War → National Banking Act → Federal Reserve → Great Depression → Securities and Exchange Commission → Enron collapses

Contested history

Consensus: Enron executives used accounting tricks and hidden partnerships to inflate earnings and hide debt; a federal task force won 22 convictions, including top executives.

Deliberate accounting fraudEstablished

Criminal trials, guilty pleas and the bankruptcy examiner's reports documented the schemes.

Enron traders manipulated California's power marketEstablished

Recorded trader calls and a 2003 federal energy regulator report documented schemes that worsened the 2000 to 2001 crisis.

Arthur Andersen was guilty of obstructionDebated

Andersen was convicted in 2002, but the Supreme Court overturned the verdict in 2005 over jury instructions, after the firm had collapsed.

Kenneth Lay faked his deathDebunked

Lay died of a heart attack in 2006 before sentencing, as an autopsy confirmed.