[...] The effect of this has been to promote what could have been a simple tale of corporate crime into the staggering revelation that everyone you listened to in the New Economy years was either a liar or an ignoramus. Despite all the recent lamentations about public "cynicism," Americans seem generally to have believed that they lived in a world where the depictions of the business press were fairly accurate, where pundits argued for things because they believed in them, where accountants and stock analysts spoke truthfully, where politicians represented their constituents and not just those with money, where the stock market had been cleansed of crooks and was now safe enough for little old ladies from Beardstown. The Enron story has flattened each of these faiths simultaneously. It's a perfect ideological reversal, a narrative that was supposed to prove the goodness of the New Economic Order and that has instead discredited it in every respect. [...]