Investment bankers now speak with derision of Enron's arrogant attempt to invade the turf of the big boys. And many in the investment community are quick to separate themselves from Enron's taint. The fault for Enron's collapse lies with Enron, they argue -- not the lack of regulation. The company gamed the system and paid the price. New rules, they stress, would only punish the innocent companies with higher costs and more red tape. The lesson of Enron's collapse is not that government needs to save the markets from themselves, but rather that bad companies fail, says Nik Khakee, director of Standard & Poor's structured finance derivatives group.

"Some people would argue that it's good for there to be more players in the derivatives market, but you need to make sure that they're all operating under an accepted set of rules," he says. Enron, he implied, made up its own rules.

Proponents of credit derivatives, in particular, dismiss the idea that Enron's fall has any larger systemic importance. Enron's derivatives will simply be redistributed, they argue. In fact, Enron's involvement with credit derivatives should be seen as "a bright spot," according to William Harrison, CEO of J.P. Morgan Chase, who defended them on Jan. 16, according to a Financial Times report. Without credit derivatives, Harrison and others have argued, Enron's $33 billion debt default would have been more highly concentrated, forcing banks that had a direct relationship with Enron to lose massive amounts of money, or close.

In other words, credit derivatives make the system more stable, so as to prevent disruption when events as catastrophic as Enron's failure happen. But not everyone shares this view. Enron may not create a chain reaction of economic disruption by itself, but if dozens of companies engage in the same kind of practices, free from any kind of government oversight, a series of failures could threaten to undermine even the most stable banks and financial firms, Partnoy, Greenberger and others argue.

Clarifying disclosure rules may not even be enough to protect against another Enron, according to Greenberger. "You need to have some sort of regulatory structure," he says, noting that banks have federal examiners in-house. "You can debate what kind of structure to put in place, but you need stronger enforcement because financial statements are not going to protect the public from imprudent, unsound or fraudulent practices."

Ultimately, as Partnoy pointed out in his testimony, "Congress must decide whether, after 10 years of steady deregulation, the post-Enron derivatives markets should remain exempt from the regulation that covers all other investment contracts."

As Partnoy noted in his Senate testimony, the gatekeepers failed, and their continued failure may set the stage for even greater economic distress. Enron's derivatives adventures, ultimately, leave us with one major, and as yet unanswered, question. Who will guard the gatekeepers?

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