
In 1999, Paul Krugman was paid $50,000 by Enron to act as a consultant and hold seminars. Krugman wrote a glowing article about Enron for Fortune magazine. After the collapse of Enron, he was a stern critic of that company.
In his columns, Krugman worked hard to link Enron to the Bush administration, and in one blamed Enron’s consultants for the company’s collapse. Krugman neglected to mention that he had been an Enron consultant:
Enron sold lots of things, but above all it sold itself: it crafted a self-portrait that business gurus loved. Like a schematic diagram from The McKinsey Quarterly or The Harvard Business Review, Enron’s business plan made a perfect PowerPoint presentation.
Other companies hired business gurus as consultants; Enron, in effect, put the gurus in charge. (Jeff Skilling, who made Enron what it is today, is a former McKinsey consultant.) What they created was a company so trendy that investors were dazzled. And that let executives get away with financial murder.
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