The Great Divide

Paul Krugman said this today in the New York Times and is an interesting look at the Enron scandal

It was a shocking event. With incredible speed, our perception of the world and of ourselves changed. It seemed that before we had lived in a kind of blind innocence, with no sense of the real dangers that lurked. Now we had experienced a rude awakening, which changed everything.
No, I'm not talking about Sept. 11; I'm talking about the Enron scandal.
One of the great clich�s of the last few months was that Sept. 11 changed everything. I never believed that. An event changes everything only if it changes the way you see yourself. And the terrorist attack couldn't do that, because we were victims rather than perpetrators. Sept. 11 told us a lot about Wahhabism, but not much about Americanism.
The Enron scandal, on the other hand, clearly was about us. It told us things about ourselves that we probably should have known, but had managed not to see. I predict that in the years ahead Enron, not Sept. 11, will come to be seen as the greater turning point in U.S. society.

Krugman is not the first to suggest that Enron and WorldCom may have a longer impact on American values then 9/11 did. It will be interesting to see.