Bear Markets & Bad Decisions

What happens when a system rewards bad behavior?Enron didn’t collapse overnight. It built itself into failure—one deal at a time.In the 1990s, Enron transformed from a traditional energy company into a financial powerhouse, trading energy contracts and reporting explosive growth. But behind the numbers was a system driven by incentives—where success was rewarded, risk was hidden, and reality was increasingly disconnected from what was reported.In this episode of Bear Markets & Bad Decisions, we break down the rise and fall of Enron through the lens of economics: moral hazard, information asymmetry, and incentive structures that encouraged behavior no one wanted to stop.From mark-to-market accounting to off-the-books entities, executive decisions, and eventual prison sentences, this is the story of how success turned into collapse—and why no one hit the brakes.Because when a system rewards bad behavior…it doesn’t correct itself.It multiplies it.