Senate Comm., supra n. 25 (Testimony of Ruder) at 2.

Senate Comm., supra n. 25 (Testimony of Hills) at 5, 8.

As Former SEC Chairman David Ruder testified:

The primary fault in the Enron failure seems to be poor management . From all accounts it appears that Enron became overly aggressive in its efforts to dominate the energy trading markets, engaged in highly leveraged off balance sheet financing, engaged in extremely aggressive accounting, overstated its earnings, failed to disclose the true nature of its corporate and financial structure, and eventually lost the confidence of its creditors and trading counter parties. Enron management appears to be primarily to blame. . . .

. . . the Enron problems represent a failure in corporate governance. One striking aspect of this failure is Enron's apparent lack of respect for the accounting system that underlies financial reporting. Enron seems to have purposely attempted to avoid disclosure of its true finances. Instead it should have utilized the accounting system as a means of assisting it to make sound management decisions and as a source of information helping it to provide the securities markets with a truthful statement of financial condition.