Enron traders, bright and believable,
traded the giant company out of business
It was not from their ignorance or laziness
the company collapsed
At the end they simply had nothing to trade
but thin air, and no motive but greed
Though in the background, stood a magical
stock point, an abstraction from the living waters
Abstractions are but potential, not actual, reality;
you cannot forever live in a house of notions
The feeling of being fantastically alive can never
take the place of the feeling of being life itself
Ambitious people tend to confuse the two and,
in their puzzlement, fail to notice intimate ultimacy
For an integral analysis of the rise and fall of Enron see
Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, Smartest Guys in the Room
