George Maddox was one of the employees who saw their savings disappear.
After his retirement money disappeared, he and his wife had to lease their own house and move to an old family farmhouse. They turned to work lower-wage jobs and ultimately weren't able to make up for the huge amounts of money they lost from ENRON's collapse. His wife died from liver cancer, and he could only pay her medical bills by using some money he had gotten from a lawsuit with some of his coworkers as they tried to get their retirement money back. He was forced to raise his young grandson on his own and find a way to get by.
While many see the collapse of ENRON as something that greatly affected the stock market and other companies, there were countless families that saw their futures destroyed because of this tragedy.
3 comments:
You usually don't think about the employees at ENRON because they are associated with ENRON and their harmful actions in general, so I thought this post was very interesting. I found it sad that even though they worked at a company that was initially so successful, they couldn't even pay off medical bills later on.
It's sad to think about the amount of money that was lost. I think the government should at least intervene a little bit and many help out those people who lost their jobs to find another job or have a little money. The stock market is a very risky place and it's interesting to see how many people put their trust in it when it has shown over and over against how untrustworthy it is.
I agree with Klaire, it's incredibly sad that the unethical dealings of upper management caused a great deal of hardship for not only investors, but the employees. They were working and investing into the business as they were encouraged to do by their employers, but sadly they were doing so under false pretenses
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