Dear wideawake,
"Note to slow-on-the-uptake investors: the stock market is risky."
Actually, the stock market is more volatile than risky. At least when you don't stupidly put all or most of your money in the shares of a single company.
The problem is that a lot of the shareholders who were left holding the bag weren't as much greedy as they were stupid. They didn't know any better. They figured, "Hey, the company's doing great, I have umpteen hundreds of thousands of dollars of stock, why would I invest in other investments that wouldn't do as well?"
Nonetheless, I don't think that Mr. Lay was responsible for their stupid behavior.
sitetest
Does anyone over the age of 12 NOT know that you must diversify investments? You are gambling if you don't.
In New England when Bank of New England went down the same thing happened. Some of the employees had only BONE stock in their portfolio. IIRC the fed bailed out the bond holders, not stock holders.
BTW, it's amazing how many FReepers actually believe that a company can have an in-house rule that prevents shareholders from freely disposing of vested shares as they see fit.
In other words, Enron and not the SEC regulates the stock market.