“There’s a big anniversary coming up this week. No, not Columbus Day; that was yesterday. Rather, it’s Enron Day, which takes place tomorrow,” writes Allan Sloan in today’s Washington Post.

“Columbus Day marks the anniversary, more or less, of Europe’s discovery of the Americas. Enron Day marks America’s discovery of how many big corporations and Wall Street firms turned rotten during the bull market. Enron symbolizes the greed and moral bankruptcy that let fat cats prosper while regular stockholders and workers with Enron stock in their 401(k) accounts got clobbered. Instead of marching bands to mark the day, we can have marching perps.”

“It was on Oct. 16, 2001, that Enron announced disastrous financial results for its third quarter, including the disappearance of $1 billion of net worth from its balance sheet. The ensuing uproar and Securities and Exchange Commission investigation led to the fall of Enron, which filed for bankruptcy protection in December.”

“Since then, plenty of other corporate scandals have erupted — WorldCom, Adelphia, Tyco and Martha Stewart, to name a few. But it all started last Oct. 16.”

“So what are Enron’s survivors doing to mark this day? Nothing. ‘We’re not having any parties,’ says Enron spokesman Mark Palmer. ‘There are 15,000 Enron employees on the job who could care less’ about the anniversary. But we non-Enron employees should care. So let’s use the anniversary to see what — if anything — has changed since Enron went from being an energy company to a five-letter synonym for scandal.”

“The clearest lesson of Enron’s fall — employees being pauperized by retirement accounts invested solely in Enron stock — has prompted the least change. You would expect that by now Congress would have done something to make sure that employees no longer could risk their retirement on the price of their employer’s stock. But you’d be wrong.”