Your Money: Old Safety Nets Are Gone. Here's What To Do

The little guy was let down by all of them--executives, board members, auditors and stock analysts. They all failed to signal trouble at Enron before it collapsed, and their negligence (or worse) offers the single broadest example of how workers and individual investors have been abandoned by so many of the people they have relied on to look out for their interests in complex financial matters. Each of these groups of professionals had a conflict of interest--a financial stake in keeping investor dollars flowing into Enron stock. And the erstwhile government and industry watchdogs over these professionals face similar conflicts at...