There's no accounting for, well, accounting

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Jerry Bowyer, chief economist at Benchmark Financial Network, faults regulations themselves for the mess: “Large financial institutions like Lehman Brothers built their balance sheets under certain sets of rules. But then those rules were changed. In the wake of the Enron scandal, numerous regulations were modified in ways that guarded against future attempts to make corporate earnings appear to be higher than they really were.”

So accounting rules designed to prevent another Enron had the effect of uncovering other Enrons... so the rules were a mistake.   Got it.