Pray, consider the curious case of the Enron company—a gathering of gentlemen merchants who possessed a talent for arithmetic that would make a common street-jugglers blush. These bold speculators, in their infinite greed, managed to disguise their mounting debts as shimmering profits, weaving a web of falsehoods so vast that it could have shrouded the entirety of Manhattan.

As Mr. Sergey Shvetsov, a distinguished observer of the Exchange, recently recounted with a touch of irony, the revelation of this charade left the investing public in a state of absolute bewilderment. The Enron rogues had treated the financial ledgers not as records of truth, but as canvases for their own imaginative fantasies. Naturally, when the bubble burst, the resulting crash was as thunderous as a falling piano in a quiet library.

To remedy this disaster and prevent every honest shareholder from leaping into the East River in despair, the American authorities unleashed a set of 'draconic measures.' It was a most satisfying spectacle: the auditing firm that had aided these tricksters was summarily liquidated, and the management—those esteemed gentlemen of the boardroom—were escorted to the dungeons to contemplate their sins behind iron bars for many long years.

At the time, the commercial class of New York was seized by a fit of hysterics. The brokers and joint-stock company directors wailed in terror, claiming that such stringent regulations would drive the flow of gold toward the counting-houses of London, Singapore, or Hong Kong. 'Ruination!' they cried, clutching their silk waistcoats. They feared that the law’s new grip on corporate reporting would stifle the spirit of the venture.

Yet, as the decades passed, a most peculiar thing occurred. The very same Wall Street speculators who had trembled in fear eventually admitted that these draconian shackles were, in fact, their salvation. By banishing the most blatant frauds and forcing the merchants to tell the truth about their debts, the New York Stock Exchange was saved from its own appetite for deception.

Thus we see that even the most cunning rogue may be subdued, provided the law is sufficiently stern and the penalty involves a sufficient loss of both liberty and profit.